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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap,„...?Cop^ight No, 



Shell. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



&efc. Br. JEiller's Boofts. 



SILENT TIMES. A book to help in reading the Bible 
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GLIMPSES THROUGH LIFE'S WINDOWS. Se- 
lections from Dr. Miller's writings, arranged by Evalena 
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THE STORY OF A BUSY LIFE. 

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THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

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BOOKLETS. 

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GIRLS: FAULTS AND IDEALS. 
YOUNG MEN: FAULTS AND IDEALS. 
SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 
THE BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS. 
A GENTLE HEART. 
BY THE STILL WATERS. 



For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid upon receipt 
of price, by the publishers. 



aromas g. Crofoell * €0. HI 1SWRS& 



NEW YORK AND 



Personal Friendships 
of Jesus 



j: r: v "miller, d.d. 



AUTHOR OF "SILENT TIMES," "MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE," "THINGS 
TO LIVE FOR," " BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS," ETC. 



One friend in that Path shall be, 
To secure my steps from wrong- ; 

One to count night day for me, 
Patient through the watches long, 

Serving- most with none to see. 

Browning. 






r */ 



New York: 46 East Fourteenth Steeet 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

Boston : 100 Purchase Street 



o3 



Copyright, 1897, 
By Thomas Y. Crovvell & Company. 






TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON, 
BOSTON. 



PREFACE. 



George MacDonald said in an address, 
"The longer I live, the more I am assured 
that the business of life is to understand the 
Lord Christ. " If this be true, whatever sheds 
even a little light on the character or life of 
Christ is worth while. 

Nothing reveals a man's heart better than 
his friendships. The kind of friend he is, tells 
the kind of man he is. The personal friend- 
ships of Jesus reveal many tender and beauti- 
ful things in his character. They show us 
also what is possible for us in divine friend- 
ship ; for the heart of Jesus is the same yes- 
terday, and to-day, and forever. 

These chapters are only suggestive, not 

exhaustive. If they make the way into close 

personal friendship with Jesus any plainer for 

those who hunger for such blessed intimacy, 

that will be reward enough. 

j. R. M. 

Philadelphia. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Humanheartedness of Jesus .... i 

II. Jesus and his Mother 15 

III. Jesus and his Forerunner 31 

IV. Jesus' Conditions of Friendship .... 48 
V. Jesus choosing his Friends 66 

VI. Jesus and the Beloved Disciple .... 85 

VII. Jesus and Peter 103 

VIII. Jesus and Thomas 118 

IX. Jesus' Unrequited Friendships .... 137 

X. Jesus and the Bethany Sisters .... 153 

XI. Jesus comforting his Friends 171 

XII. Jesus and His Secret Friends .... 190 

XIII. Jesus' Farewell to His Friends .... 208 

XIV. Jesus' Friendships after He arose . . . 228 
XV. Jesus as a Friend 248 



All I could never be, 
All men ignored in me, 
This I was worth to God. 

Browning. 

But lead me, Man divine, 
Where'er Thou will'st, only that I may find 
At the long journey's end Thy image there, 
And grow more like to it. For art not Thou 
The human shadow of the infinite Love 
That made and fills the endless universe ? 
The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown, 
Eternal Good that rules the summer flower 
And all the worlds that people starry space. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. 

O God, O kinsman loved, but not enough, 

man with eyes majestic after death, 

Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough, 
Whose lips drawn human breath; 

By that one likeness which is ours and thine, 
By that one nature which doth hold us kin, 

By that high heaven where sinless thou dost shine, 
To draw us sinners in ; 

By thy last silence in the judgment hall, 

By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree, 
By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall, 

1 pray thee visit me. 

Jean Ingelow. 

There is a natural tendency to think of 
Jesus as different from other men in the hu- 
man * element of his personality. Our adora- 



2 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

tion of him as our divine Lord makes it seem 
almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the 
ordinary rank with that of other men. It 
seems to us that life could not have meant the 
same to him that it means to us. It is difficult 
for us to conceive of him as learning in child- 
hood as other children have to learn. We 
find ourselves fancying that he must always 
have known how to read and write and speak. 
We think of the experiences of his youth and 
young manhood as altogether unlike those of 
any other boy or young man in the village 
where he grew up. This same feeling leads 
us to think of his temptation as so different 
from what temptation is to other men as to 
be really no temptation at all. 

So we are apt to think of all the human 
life of Jesus as being in some way lifted up 
out of the rank of ordinary experiences. We 
do not conceive of him as having the same 
struggles that we have in meeting trial, in en- 
during injury and wrong, in learning obedi- 
ence, patience, meekness, submission, trust, 
and cheerfulness. We conceive of his friend- 



THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. 3 

ships as somehow different from other men's. 
We feel that in some mysterious way his hu- 
man life was supported and sustained by the 
deity that dwelt in him, and that he was ex- 
empt from all ordinary limiting conditions of 
humanity. 

There is no doubt that with many people 
this feeling of reverence has been in the way 
of the truest understanding of Jesus, and oft- 
times those who have clung most devoutly to 
a belief in his deity have missed much of the 
comfort which comes from a proper comprehen- 
sion of his humanity. 

Yet the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels 
furnishes no ground for any confusion on the 
subject of his human life. It represents him 
as subject to all ordinary human conditions 
excepting sin. He began life as every infant 
begins, in feebleness and ignorance ; and there 
is no hint of any precocious development. He 
learned as every child must learn. The les- 
sons were not gotten easily or without diligent 
study. He played as other boys did, and with 
them. The more we think of the youth of 



4 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Jesus as in no marked way unlike that of those 
among whom he lived, the truer will our 
thought of him be. 

Millais the great artist, when he was a 
young man, painted an unusual picture of 
Jesus. He represented him as a little boy in 
the home at Nazareth. He has cut his finger 
on some carpenter's tool, and comes to his 
mother to have it bound up. The picture is 
really one of the truest of all the many pic- 
tures of Jesus, because it depicts just such a 
scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in 
his youth. Evidently there was nothing in his 
life in Nazareth that drew the attention of his 
companions and neighbors to him in any strik- 
ing way. We know that he wrought no mira- 
cles until after he had entered upon his public 
ministry. We can think of him as living a 
life of unselfishness and kindness. There was 
never any sin or fault in him ; he always kept 
the law of God perfectly. But his perfection 
was not something startling. There was no 
halo about his head, no transfiguration, that 
awed men. We are told that he grew in favor 



THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. 5 

with men as well as with God. His religion 
made his life beautiful and winning, but al- 
ways so simple and natural that it drew no 
unusual attention to itself. It was richly and 
ideally human. 

So it was unto the end. Through the years 
of his public ministry, when his words and 
works burned with divine revealing, he con- 
tinued to live an altogether natural human 
life. He ate and drank ; he grew weary and 
faint ; he was tempted in all points like as we 
are, and suffered, being tempted. He learned 
obedience by the things that he endured. He 
hungered and thirsted, never ministering with 
his divine power to any of his own needs. " In 
all things it behooved him to be made like 
unto his brethren." 

In nothing else is this truth more clearly 
shown than in the humanheartedness which 
was so striking a feature of the life of Jesus 
among men. When we think of him as the 
Son of God, the question arises, Did he really 
care for personal friendships with men and 
women of the human family ? In the home 



6 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

from which he came he had dwelt from all 
eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had 
enjoyed the companionship of the highest 
angels. What could he find in this world of 
imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings 
of his heart for fellowship ? Whom could he 
find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of 
his friendship, or capable of being in any real 
sense his personal friend ? What satisfaction 
could his heart find in this world's deepest and 
holiest love ? What light can a dim candle 
give to the sun ? Does the great ocean need 
the little dewdrop that hides in the bosom of 
the rose? What blessing or inspiration of 
love can any poor, marred, stained life give to 
the soul of the Christ ? 

Yet the Gospels abound with evidences that 
Jesus did crave human love, that he found 
sweet comfort in the friendships which he 
made, and that much of his keenest suffering 
was caused by failures in the love of those who 
ought to have been true to him as his friends. 
He craved affection, and even among the weak 
and faulty men and women about him made 



THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. 7 

many very sacred attachments from which he 
drew strength and comfort. 

We must distinguish between Christ's love 
for all men and his friendship for particular 
individuals. He was in the world to reveal 
the Father, and all the divine compassion for 
sinners was in his heart. It was this mighty 
love that brought him to earth on the mission 
of redemption. It was this that impelled and 
constrained him in all his seeking of the lost. 
He had come to be the Saviour of all who 
would believe and follow him. Therefore he 
was interested in every merest fragment or 
shred of life. No human soul was so debased 
that he did not love it. 

But besides this universal divine love re- 
vealed in the heart of Jesus, he had his per- 
sonal human friendships. A philanthropist 
may give his whole life to the good of his fel- 
low-men, to their uplifting, their advancement, 
their education ; to the liberation of the en- 
slaved ; to work among and in behalf of the 
poor, the sick, or the fallen. All suffering 
humanity has its interest for him, and makes 



8 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

appeal to his compassion. Yet amid the world 
of those whom he thus loves and wishes tc 
help, this man will have his personal friends 
and through the story of his life will run the 
golden threads of sweet companionships and 
friendships whose benedictions and inspira 
tions will be secrets of strength, cheer, and 
help to him in all his toil in behalf of others. 

Jesus gave all his rich and blessed life to the 
service of love. Power was ever going out 
from him to heal, to comfort, to cheer, to save. 
He was continually emptying out from the full 
fountain of his own heart cupfuls of rich life 
to reinvigorate other lives in their faintness 
and exhaustion. One of the sources of his 
own renewing and replenishing was in the 
friendships he had among men and women. 
What friends are to us in our human hunger 
and need, the friends of Jesus were to him. 
He craved companionship, and was sorely hurt 
when men shut their doors in his face. 

There are few more pathetic words in the 
New Testament than that short sentence which 
tells of his rejection, "He came unto his own, 



THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. 9 

and his own received him not." Another 
pathetic word is that which describes the neg- 
lect of those who ought to have been ever eager 
to show him hospitality : " The foxes have 
holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but 
the Son of man hath not where to lay his 
head." Even the beasts of the field and the 
birds of the heaven had warmer welcome in 
this world than he in whose heart was the 
most gentle love that earth ever knew. 

Another word which reveals the deep hun- 
ger of the heart of Jesus for friendship and 
companionship was spoken in view of the hour 
when even his own apostles would leave him : 
"Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, 
that ye shall be scattered, every man to his 
own, and shall leave me alone." The experi- 
ence of the garden of Gethsemane also shows 
in a wonderful way the Lord's craving for 
sympathy. In his great sorrow he wished to 
have his best friends near him, that he might 
lean on them, and draw from their love a little 
strength for his hour of bitter need. It was 
an added element in the sorrow of that night 



IO THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

that he failed to get the help from human 
sympathy which he yearned for and expected. 
When he came back each time after his sup- 
plication, he found his apostles sleeping. 

These are some of the glimpses which we 
get in the Gospel story of the longing heart 
of Jesus. He loved deeply, and sought to be 
loved. He was disappointed when he failed to 
find affection. He welcomed love wherever it 
came to him, — the love of the poor, the grati- 
tude of those whom he had helped, the trust- 
ing affection of little children. We can never 
know how much the friendship of the beloved 
disciple was to Jesus. What a shelter and 
comfort the Bethany home was to him, and 
how his strength was renewed by its sweet 
fellowship ! How even the smallest kind- 
nesses were a solace to his heart ! How he 
was comforted by the affection and the min- 
istries of the women -friends who followed 
him ! 

In the chapters of this book which follow, 
the attempt is made to tell the story of some 
of the friendships of Jesus, gathering up the 



THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. II 

threads from the Gospel pages. Sometimes 
the material is abundant, as in the case of 
Peter and John ; sometimes we have only a 
glimpse or two in the record, albeit enough to 
reveal a warm and tender friendship, as in the 
case of the Bethany sisters, and of Andrew, 
and of Joseph. It may do us good to study 
these friendship stories. It will at least show 
us the humanheartedness of Jesus, and his 
method in blessing and saving the world. The 
central fact in every true Christian life is a 
personal friendship with Jesus. Men were 
called to follow him, to leave all and cleave to 
him, to believe on him, to trust him, to love 
him, to obey him ; and the result was the trans- 
formation of their lives into his own beauty. 
That which alone makes one a Christian is 
being a friend of Jesus. Friendship trans- 
forms — all human friendship transforms. We 
become like those with whom we live in close, 
intimate relations. Life flows into life, heart 
and heart are knit together, spirits blend, and 
the two friends become one. 

We have but little to give to Christ ; yet it 



12 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

is a comfort to know that our friendship really 
is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor 
and meagre though its best may be — but he 
has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call 
you friends." No other gift he gives to us 
can equal in value the love and friendship of 
his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of 
his courtiers, a gold cup, he gave Chrysanthus, 
his favorite, only a kiss. And Artabazus said 
to Cyrus, "The cup you gave me was not so 
good gold as the kiss you gave Chrysanthus.' ' 
No good man's money is ever worth so much 
as his love. Certainly the greatest honor of 
this earth, greater than rank or station or 
wealth, is the friendship of Jesus Christ. And 
this honor is within the reach of every one. 
" Henceforth I call you not servants ... I 
have called you friends." "Ye are my friends, 
if ye do whatsoever I command you." 

The stories of the friendships of Jesus when 
he was on the earth need cause no one to sigh, 
" I wish that I had lived in those days, when 
Jesus lived among men, that I might have 
been his friend too, feeling the warmth of his 



THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS. 1 3 

love, my life enriched by contact with his, and 
my spirit quickened by his love and grace ! " 
The friendships of Jesus, whose stories we 
read in the New Testament, are only patterns 
of friendships into which we may enter, if we 
are ready to accept what he offers, and to 
consecrate our life to faithfulness and love. 

The friendship of Jesus includes all other 
blessings for time and for eternity. "All 
things are yours, and ye are Christ's." His 
friendship sanctifies all pure human bonds — 
no friendship is complete which is not woven 
of a threefold cord. If Christ is our friend, 
all life is made rich and beautiful to us. The 
past, with all of sacred loss it holds, lives be- 
fore us in him. The future is a garden-spot 
in which all life's sweet hopes, that seem to 
have perished on the earth, will be found grow- 
ing for us. 

" Fields of the past to thee shall be no more 

The burialground of friendships once in bloom, 
But the seed-plots of a harvest on before, 
And prophecies of life with larger room 
For things that are behind. 



14 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Live thou in Christ, and thy dead past shall be 

Alive forever with eternal day; 
And planted on his bosom thou shalt see 

The flowers revived that withered on the way 
Amid the things behind." 



CHAPTER II. 

JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 

Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One! 
My flesh, my Lord! — what name? I do not know 
A name that seemeth not too high or low, 

Too far from me or heaven. 
My Jesus, that is best ! 



Sleep, sleep, my saving One. 

Mrs. Browning. 



The first friend a child has in this world 
is its mother. It comes here an utter stranger, 
knowing no one ; but it finds love waiting for 
it. Instantly the little stranger has a friend, 
a bosom to nestle in, an arm to encircle it, 
a hand to minister to its helplessness. Love 
is born with the child. The mother presses it 
to her breast, and at once her heart's tendrils 
twine about it. 

It is a good while before the child becomes 
conscious of the wondrous love that is bending 

15 



1 6 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

over it, yet all the time the love is growing 
in depth and tenderness. In a thousand ways, 
by a thousand delicate arts, the mother seeks 
to waken in her child a response to her own 
yearning love. At length the first gleams of 
answering affection appear — the child has be- 
gun to love. From that hour the holy friend- 
ship grows. The two lives become knit in 
one. 

When God would give the world a great 
man, a man of rare spirit and transcendent 
power, a man with a lofty mission, he first 
prepares a woman to be his mother. When- 
ever in history we come upon such a man, 
we instinctively begin to ask about the char- 
acter of her on whose bosom he nestled in 
infancy, and at whose knee he learned his 
life's first lessons. We are sure of finding 
here the secret of the man's greatness. When 
the time drew nigh for the incarnation of 
the Son of God, we may be sure that into the 
soul of the woman who should be his mother, 
who should impart her own life to him, who 
should teach him his first lessons, and prepare 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 1 7 

him for his holy mission, God put the loveliest 
and the best qualities that ever were lodged 
in any woman's life. We need not accept the 
teaching that exalts the mother of Jesus to 
a place beside or above her divine Son. We 
need have no sympathy whatever with the 
dogma that ascribes worship to the Virgin 
Mary, and teaches that the Son on his throne 
must be approached by mortals through his 
more merciful, more gentle-hearted mother. 
But we need not let these errors concerning 
Mary obscure the real blessedness of her char- 
acter. We remember the angel's greeting, 
" Blessed art thou among women." Hers 
surely was the highest honor ever conferred 
upon any woman. 

" Say of me as the Heavenly said, * Thou art 
The blessedest of women ! ' — blessedest, 
Not holiest, not noblest, — no high name, 
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame, 
When I sit meek in heaven! " 

We know how other men, men of genius, 
rarely ever have failed to give to their mothers 
the honor of whatever of greatness or worth 



1 8 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

they had attained. But somehow we shrink 
from saying that Jesus was influenced by his 
mother as other good men have been ; that he 
got from her much of the beauty and the 
power of his life. We are apt to fancy that 
his mother was not to him what mothers or- 
dinarily are to their children ; that he did not 
need mothering as other children do ; that by 
reason of the Deity indwelling, his character 
unfolded from within, without the aid of home 
teaching and training, and the other educa- 
tional influences which do so much in shaping 
the character of children in common homes. 

But there is no Scriptural ground for this 
feeling. The humanity of Jesus was just like 
our humanity. He came into the world just 
as feeble and as untaught as any other child 
that ever was born. No mother was ever more 
to her infant than Mary was to Jesus. She 
taught him all his first lessons. She gave 
him his first thoughts about God, and from 
her lips he learned the first lispings of prayer. 
Jewish mothers cared very tenderly for their 
children. They taught them with unwearying 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 1 9 

patience the words of God. One of the rabbis 
said, " God could not be everywhere, and 
therefore he made mothers." This saying 
shows how sacred was the Jewish thought of 
the mothers work for her child. 

Every true mother feels a sense of awe in 
her soul when she bends over her own infant 
child ; but in the case of Mary we may be 
sure that the awe was unusual, because of the 
mystery of the child's birth. In the annun- 
ciation the angel had said to her, " That which 
is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of 
God." Then the night of her child's birth 
there was a wondrous vision of angels, and 
the shepherds who beheld it hastened into the 
town ; and as they looked upon the baby in 
the manger, they told the wondering mother 
what they had seen and heard. We are told 
that Mary kept all these things, pondering 
them in her heart. While she could not un- 
derstand what all this meant, she knew at 
least that hers was no common child ; that 
in some wonderful sense he was the Son of 
God. 



20 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

This consciousness must have given to her 
motherhood an unusual thoughtfulness and se- 
riousness. How close to God she must have 
lived ! How deep and tender her love must 
have been ! How pure and clean her heart 
must have been kept ! How sweet and patient 
she must have been as she moved about at 
her tasks, in order that no harsh or bitter- 
thought or feeling might ever cast a shadow 
upon the holy life which had been intrusted 
to her for training and moulding. 

Only a few times is the veil lifted to give 
us a glimpse of mother and child, On the 
fortieth day he was taken to the temple, and 
given to God. Then it was that another re- 
minder of the glory of this child was given to 
the mother. An old man, Simeon, took the 
infant in his arms, and spoke of him as God's 
salvation. As he gave the parents his parting 
blessing he lifted the veil, and showed them 
a glimmering of the future. " This child is 
set for the fall and rising again of many in 
Israel ; and for a sign which shall be spoken 
against." Then to the mother he said sol- 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 21 

emnly, " Yea, a sword shall pierce through 
thine own soul also." This was a foretelling 
of the sorrow which should come to the heart 
of Mary, and which came again and again, 
until at last she saw her son on a cross. The 
shadow of the cross rested on Mary's soul all 
the years. Every time she rocked her baby 
to sleep, and laid him down softly, covering 
his face with kisses, there would come into 
her heart a pang as she remembered Simeon's 
words. Perhaps, too, words from the old 
prophets would come into her mind, — " He is 
despised and rejected of men ; a man of sor- 
rows ; " " He was bruised for our iniquities," 
— and the tears would come welling into her 
eyes. Every time she saw her child at play, 
full of gladness, all unconscious of any sorrow 
awaiting him, a nameless fear would steal over 
her as she remembered the ominous words 
which had fallen upon her ear, and which she 
could not forget. 

Soon after the presentation in the temple 
came the visit of the magi. Again the mother 
must have wondered as she heard these 



22 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

strangers from the East speak of her infant 
boy as the " King of the Jews," and saw them 
falling down before him in reverent worship, 
and then laying their offerings at his feet. 
Immediately following this came the flight into 
Egypt. How the mother must have pressed 
her child to her bosom as she fled with him 
to escape the cruel danger ! By and by they 
returned, and from that time Nazareth was 
their home. 

Only once in the thirty years do we have 
a glimpse of mother and child. It was when 
Jesus went to his first Passover. When the 
time came for returning home the child tarried 
behind. After a painful search the mother 
found him in one of the porches of the tem- 
ple, sitting with the rabbis, an eager learner. 
There is a tone of reproach in her words, 
" Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us ? be- 
hold, thy father and I have sought thee sor- 
rowing." She was sorely perplexed. All the 
years before this her son had implicitly obeyed 
her. He had never resisted her will, never 
withdrawn from her guidance. Now he had 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 2$ 

done something without asking her about it — 
as it were, had taken his life into his own 
hand. It was a critical point in the friend- 
ship of this mother and her child. It is a 
critical moment in the friendship of any mother 
and her child when the child begins to think 
and act for himself, to do things without the 
mother's guidance. 

The answer of Jesus is instructive : " I must 
be about my Father's business. ,, There was 
another besides his mother to whom he owed 
allegiance. He was the Son of God as well 
as the son of Mary. Parents should remem- 
ber this always in dealing with their children, 
— their children are more God's than theirs. 

It is interesting to notice what follows that 
remarkable experience of mother and child in 
the temple. Jesus returned with his mother 
to the lowly Nazareth home, and was subject 
to her. In recognizing his relation to God 
as his heavenly Father, he did not become 
any less the child of his earthly mother. He 
loved his mother no less because he loved God 
more. Obedience to the Father in heaven did 



24 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

not lead him to reject the rule of earthly par- 
enthood. He went back to the quiet home, 
and for eighteen years longer found his Fa- 
ther's business in the common round of lowly 
tasks which made up the daily life of such a 
home. 

It would be intensely interesting to read 
the % story of mother and son during those 
years, but it has not been written for us. 
They must have been years of wondrous 
beauty. Few things in this world are more 
beautiful than such friendships as one some- 
times sees between mother and son. The 
boy is more the lover than the child. The 
two enter into the closest companionship. A 
sacred and inviolable intimacy is formed be- 
tween them. The boy opens all his heart 
to his mother, telling her everything ; and she, 
happy woman, knows how to be a boy's mother 
and to keep a mother's place without ever 
startling or checking the shy confidences, or 
causing him to desire to hide anything from 
her. The boy whispers his inmost thoughts 
to his mother, and listens to her wise and 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER, 2$ 

gentle counsels with loving eagerness and 
childish faith — 

" Her face his holy skies; 
The air he breathes his mother's breath, 
His stars his mother's eyes." 

Not always are mother and boy such friends. 
Some mothers do not think it worth while to 
give the time and thought necessary to enter 
into a boy's life in such confidential way. But 
we may be sure that between the mother of 
Jesus and her son the most tender and inti- 
mate friendship existed. He opened his soul 
to her ; and she gave him not a mother's love 
only, but also a mother's wise counsel and 
strong, inspiring sympathy. 

It is almost certain that sorrow entered the 
Nazareth home soon after the visit to Jerusa- 
lem. Joseph is not mentioned again ; and it 
is supposed that he died, leaving Mary a 
widow. On Jesus, as the eldest son, the care 
of the mother now rested. Knowing the deep 
love of his heart and his wondrous gentle- 
ness, it is easy for us to understand with what 
unselfish devotion he cared for his mother 



26 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

after she was widowed. He had learned the 
carpenter's trade ; and day after day, early and 
late, he wrought with his hands to provide 
for her wants. Very sacred must have been 
the friendship of mother and son in those 
days. Her gentleness, quietness, hopefulness, 
humility, and prayerfulness, must have wrought 
themselves into the very tissue of his charac- 
ter as he moved through the days in such 
closeness. Unto the end he carried in his 
soul the benedictions of his mother's life. 

The thirty silent years of preparation closed, 
and Jesus went out to begin his public minis- 
try. The first glimpse we have of the mother 
is at the wedding at Cana. Jesus was there 
too. The wine failed, and Mary went to Jesus 
about the matter. " They have no wine," she 
said. Evidently she was expecting some mani- 
festing of supernatural power. All the years 
since his birth she had been carrying in her 
heart a great wonder of expectation. Now 
he had been baptized, and had entered upon 
his work as the Messiah. Had not the time 
come for miracle-working? 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 2J 

The answer of Jesus startles us : " Woman, 
what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is 
not yet come." The words seem to have in 
them a tone of reproof, or of repulse, unlike 
the words of so gentle and loving a son. But 
really there is in his reply nothing inconsis- 
tent with all that we have learned to think 
of the gentleness and lovingness of the heart 
of Jesus. In substance he said only that he 
must wait for his Father's word before doing 
any miracle, and that the time for this had 
not yet come. Evidently his mother under- 
stood him. She was not hurt by his words, 
nor did she regard them as a refusal to help 
in the emergency. Her words to the servants 
show this : " Whatsoever he saith unto you, 
do it." She had learned her lesson of sweet 
humility. She knew now that God had the 
highest claim on her son's obedience, and she 
quietly waited for the divine voice. The holy 
friendship was not marred. 

There is another long period in which no 
mention is made of Mary. Probably she lived 
a secluded life. But one day at Capernaum, 



28 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

in the midst of his popularity, when Jesus 
was preaching to a great crowd, she and his 
brothers appeared on the outside of the throng, 
and sent a request that they might speak 
with him. It seems almost certain that the 
mother's errand was to try to get him away 
from his exhausting work ; he was imperilling 
his health and his safety. Jesus refused to 
be interrupted. But it was really only an as- 
sertion that nothing must come between him 
and his duty. The Father's business always 
comes first. Human ties are second to the 
bond which binds us to God. No dishonor 
was done by Jesus to his mother in refusing 
to be drawn away by her loving interest from 
his work. The holiest human friendship must 
never keep us from doing the will of God. 
Other mothers in their love for their children 
have made the same mistake that the mother 
of Jesus made, — have tried to withhold or 
withdraw their children from service which 
seemed too hard or too costly. The voice of 
tenderest love must be quenched when it 
would keep us from doing God's will. 



JESUS AND HIS MOTHER. 29 

The next mention of the mother of Jesus is 
in the story of the cross. Ah, holy mother- 
love, constant and faithful to the end ! At 
length Simeon's prophecy is fulfilled, — a sword 
is piercing the mother's soul also. " Jesus 
was crucified on the cross ; Mary was cruci- 
fied at the foot of the cross." 

Note only one feature of the scene, — the 
mother-love there is in it. The story of cling- 
ing mother-love is a wonderful one. A mother 
never forsakes her child. Mary is not the 
only mother who has followed a son to a 
cross. Here we have the culmination of this 
mother's friendship for her son. She is watch- 
ing beside his cross. O friendship constant, 
faithful, undying, and true ! 

But what of the friendship of the dying son 
for his mother? In his own anguish does he 
notice her? Yes; one of the seven words 
spoken while he hung on the cross told of 
changeless love in his heart for her. Mary 
was a woman of more than fifty, "with years 
before her too many for remembering, too 
few for forgetting." The world would be des- 



30 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

olate for her when her son was gone. So he 
made provision for her in the shelter of a 
love in which he knew she would be safe. 
As he saw her led away by the beloved dis- 
ciple to his own home, part of the pain of 
dying was gone from his own heart. His 
mother would have tender care. 

The story of this blessed friendship should 
sweeten forever in Christian homes the relation 
of mother and child. It should make every 
mother a better woman and a better mother. 
It should make every child a truer, holier child. 
Every home should have its sacred friendships 
between parents and children. Thus some- 
thing of heaven will be brought down to our 
dull earth ; for, as Mrs. Browning says, — 

In the pure loves of child and mother 
Two human loves make one divine. 



CHAPTER III. 

JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 

Where is the lore the Baptist taught, 
The soul unswerving and the fearless tongue ? 

The much-enduring wisdom, sought 
By lonely prayer the haunted rocks among? 
Who counts it gain 
His light should wane, 
So the whole world to Jesus throng? 

Keble. 

The two Johns appear in many devotional 
pictures, one on each side of Jesus. Yet the 
two men were vastly unlike. The Baptist was 
a wild, rugged man of the desert ; the apostle 
was the representative of the highest type of 
gentleness and spiritual refinement. The for- 
mer was the consummate flower of Old Tes- 
tament prophecy ; the latter was the ripe fruit 
of New Testament evangelism. They appear 
in history one really on each side of Jesus ; 
one going before him to prepare the way for 

31 



32 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

him, and the other coming after him to de- 
clare the meaning of his mission. They were 
united in Jesus ; both of them were his 
friends. 

It seems probable that Jesus and the Bap- 
tist had never met until the day Jesus came 
to be baptized. This is not to be wondered 
at. Their childhood homes were not near to 
each other. Besides, John probably turned 
away at an early age from the abodes of 
men to make his home in the desert. He 
may never have visited Jesus, and it is not 
unlikely that Jesus had never visited him. 

Yet their mothers are said to have been 
cousins. The stories of their births are woven 
together in an exquisite way, in the opening 
chapters of the Gospels. To the same high 
angel fell the privilege of announcing to the 
two women, in turn, the tidings which in 
each case meant so much of honor and bless- 
edness. It would have seemed natural for 
the boys to grow up together, their lives 
blending in childhood association and affec- 
tion. It is interesting to think what the ef- 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 33 

feet would have been upon the characters of 
both if they had been reared in close com- 
panionship. How would John's stern, rugged, 
unsocial nature have affected the gentle spirit 
of Jesus ? What impression would the bright- 
ness, sweetness, and affectionateness of Jesus 
have made on the temper and disposition of 
John ? 

When at last the two men met, it is evident 
that a remarkable effect was produced on John. 
There was something in the face of Jesus that 
almost overpowered the fearless preacher of 
the desert. John had been waiting and watch- 
ing for the Coming One, whose herald and 
harbinger he was. One day he came and 
asked to be baptized. John had never before 
hesitated to administer the rite to any one 
who stood before him ; for in every one he 
saw a sinner needing repentance and remis- 
sion of sins. But he who now stood before 
him waiting to be baptized bore upon his face 
the light of an inner holiness which awed the 
rugged preacher. "I have need to be bap- 
tized of thee," said John ; but Jesus insisted, 



34 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

and the rite was administered. John's awe 
must have been deepened by what now took 
place. Jesus looked up in earnest prayer, 
and then from the open heaven a white dove 
descended, resting on the head of the Holy 
One. An ancient legend tells that from the 
shining light the whole valley of the Jordan 
was illuminated. A divine voice was heard 
also, declaring that this Jesus was the Son 
of God. 

Thus it was that the friendship between 
Jesus and the Baptist began. It was a won- 
derful moment. For centuries prophets had 
been pointing forward to the Messiah who was 
to come ; now John saw him. He had baptized 
him, thus introducing him to his great mis- 
sion. This made John the greatest of the 
prophets ; he saw the Messiah whom his pred- 
ecessors had only foretold. John's rugged na- 
ture must have been wondrously softened by 
this meeting with Jesus. 

Brief was the duration of the friendship of 
the forerunner and the Messiah ; but there 
are evidences that it was strong, deep, and 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 35 

true. There were several occasions on which 
this friendship proved its sincerity and its 
loyalty. 

Reports of the preaching of John, and of 
the throngs who were flocking to him, reached 
Jerusalem ; and a deputation was sent by the 
Sanhedrin to the desert to ask him who he 
was. They had begun to think that this man 
who was attracting such attention might be 
the Messiah for whom they were looking. But 
John was careful to say that he was not the 
Christ. " Art thou Elias ? . . . Art thou that 
prophet ?" He answered "No." — "Who art 
thou, then?" they asked, "that we may give 
an answer to them that sent us. What sayest 
thou of thyself ? " 

This gave John an opportunity to claim the 
highest honor for himself if he had been dis- 
posed to do so. He might have admitted that 
he was the Messiah, or quietly permitted the 
impression to be cherished ; and in the state 
of feeling and expectation then prevailing 
among the people, there would have been a 
great uprising to carry him to a throne. But 



36 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

his loyalty to truth and to the Messiah whose 
forerunner he was, was so strong that he 
firmly resisted the opportunity, with whatever 
of temptation it may have had for him. " I am 
a voice," he answered — nothing but a voice. 
Thus he showed an element of greatness in 
his lowly estimate of himself. 

True, a voice may do great things. It may 
speak words which shall ring through the 
world with a blessing in every reverberation. 
It may arouse men to action, may comfort 
sorrow, cheer discouragement, start hope in 
despairing hearts. If one is only a voice, and 
if there be truth and love and life in the voice, 
its ministry may be rich in its influence. 

Much of the Bible is but a voice coming 
out of the depths of the past. No one knows 
the names of all the holy men who, moved by 
the Spirit, wrote the wonderful words. Many 
of the sweetest of the Psalms are anonymous. 
Yet no one prizes the words less, nor is their 
power to comfort, cheer, inspire, or quicken 
any less, because they are only voices. After 
all, it is a great thing to be a voice to which 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 37 

men and women will listen, and whose words 
do good wherever they go. 

Yet John's speaking thus of himself shows 
his humility. He sought no earthly praise 
or recognition. He was not eager to have his 
name sounding on peopled lips. He knew 
well how empty such honor was. He wished 
only that he might be a voice, speaking out 
the word he had been sent into the world to 
speak. He knew that he had a message to 
deliver, and he was intent on delivering it. 
It mattered not who or what he was, but it 
did matter whether his " word or two " were 
spoken faithfully or not. 

Every one of us has a message from God 
to men. We are in this world for a purpose, 
with a mission, with something definite to do 
for God and man. It makes very little differ- 
ence whether people hear about us or not, 
whether we are praised, loved, and honored, 
or despised, hated, and rejected, so that we 
get our word spoken into the air, and set going 
in men's hearts and lives. John was a worthy 
voice, and his tones rang out with clarion clear- 



38 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

ness for truth and for God's kingdom. It was 
his mission to go in advance of the King, and 
tell men that he was coming, calling them 
to prepare the way before him. This he did ; 
and when the King came, John's work was 
done. 

The deputation asked him also why he was 
baptizing if he was neither the Christ nor 
Elijah. Again John honored his friend by 
saying, " I baptize with water : but there 
standeth one among you, whom ye know not ; 
he it is, who coming after me is preferred be 
fore me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy 
to unloose." John set the pattern for friend- 
ship for Christ for all time. It is, — 

"None of self, and all of thee." 

It is pitiable to see how some among the 
Master's followers fail to learn this lesson. 
They contend for high places, where they 
may have prominence among men, where 
their names shall have honor. The only truly 
great in Christ's sight are those who forget 
self that they may honor their Lord. John 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 39 

said he was not worthy to unloose the shoe- 
latchet of his friend, so great, so kingly, so 
worthy was that friend. He said his own 
work was only external, while the One stand- 
ing unrecognized among the people had power 
to reach their hearts. It were well if every 
follower of Christ understood so perfectly the 
place of his own work with relation to Chrises. 
Another of John's testimonies to Jesus was 
made a little later, perhaps as Jesus returned 
after his temptation. Pointing to a young 
man who was approaching, he said, " Behold 
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
of the world." It was a high honor which in 
these words John gave to his friend. That 
friend was the bearer of the world's sin and of 
its sorrow. It is not likely that at this early 
stage John knew of the cross on which Jesus 
should die for the world. In some way, how- 
ever, he saw a vision of Jesus saving his peo- 
ple from their sin, and so proclaimed him to 
the circle that stood round him. He pro- 
claimed him also as the Son of God, thus 
adding yet another honor to his friend. 



40 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

A day or two later John again pointed Jesus 
out to two of his own disciples as the Lamb 
of God, and then bade them leave him and 
go after the Messiah. This is another mark 
of John's noble friendship for Jesus, — he gave 
up his own disciples that they might go after 
the new Master. It is not easy to do this. It 
takes a brave man to send his friends away, 
that they may give their love and service to 
another master. 

There is further illustration of John's loyal 
friendship for Jesus. It seems that John's 
disciples were somewhat jealous of the grow- 
ing fame and influence of Jesus. The throngs 
that followed their master were now turning 
after the new teacher. In their great love 
for John, and remembering how he had wit- 
nessed for Jesus, and called attention to him, 
before he began his ministry and after, they 
felt that it was scarcely right that Jesus 
should rise to prosperity at the expense of 
him who had so helped him rise. If John 
had been less noble than he was, and his 
friendship for Jesus less loyal, such words 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 4 1 

from his followers would have embittered him. 
There are people who do irreparable hurt by 
such flattering sympathy. A spark of envy 
is often fanned into a disastrous flame by 
friends who come with such appeals to the 
evil that is in every man. 

But John's answer shows a soul of wondrous 
nobleness. He had not been hurt by popu- 
larity, as so many men are. Not all good 
people pass through times of great success, 
with its attendant elation and adulation, and 
come out simple-hearted and lowly. Then 
even a severer test of character is the time 
of waning favor, when the crowds melt away, 
and when another is receiving the applause. 
Many a man, in such an experience, fails to 
retain sweetness of spirit, and becomes soured 
and embittered. 

John stood both tests. Popularity did not 
make him vain. The losing of his fame did 
not embitter him. He kept humble and sweet 
through it all. The secret was his unwaver- 
ing loyalty to his own mission as the harbin- 
ger of the Messiah. "A man can receive 



42 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

nothing, except it be given him from heaven, " 
he said. The power over men which he had 
wielded for a time had been given to him. 
Now the power had been withdrawn, and given 
to Jesus. It was all right, and he should not 
complain of what Heaven had done. 

Then John reminded his friends that he had 
distinctly said that he was not the Christ, 
but was only one sent before him. In a won- 
drously expressive way he explained his rela- 
tion to Jesus. Jesus was the bridegroom, and 
John was only the bridegroom's friend, and he 
rejoiced in the bridegroom's honor. It was 
meet that the bridegroom should have the 
honor, and that his friend should retire into 
the background, and there be forgotten. Thus 
John showed his loyalty to Jesus by rejoicing 
in his popular favor, when the effect was to 
leave John himself deserted and alone after 
a season of great fame. " He must increase, 
but I must decrease," said the noble-hearted 
forerunner. John's work was done, and the 
work of Jesus was now beginning. John un- 
derstood this, and with devoted loyalty, unsur- 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER, 43 

passed in all the bright story of friendship, 
he rejoiced in the success that Jesus was 
winning, though it was at his own cost. 

This is a model of noble friendship for all 
time. Envy poisons much human friendship. 
It is not easy to work loyally for the honor 
and advancement of another when he is taking 
our place, and drawing our crowds after him. 
But in any circumstances envy is despicable 
and most undivine. Then even in our friend- 
ship for Christ we need to be ever most watch- 
ful lest we allow self to creep in. We must 
learn to care only for his honor and the ad- 
vancement of his kingdom, and never to think 
of ourselves. 

So much for the friendship of John for 
Jesus. On several occasions we find evidences 
of very warm friendship in Jesus for John. 
John's imprisonment was a most pathetic epi- 
sode in his life. It came from his fidelity as 
a preacher of righteousness. In view of all 
the circumstances, we can scarcely wonder 
that in his dreary prison he began almost to 
doubt, certainly to question, whether Jesus 



44 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

were indeed the Messiah. But it must be 
noted that even in this painful experience 
John was loyal to Jesus. When the question 
arose in his mind, he sent directly to Jesus 
to have it answered. If only all in whose 
minds spiritual doubts or questions arise would 
do this, good, and not evil, would result in 
every case ; for Christ always knows how to 
reassure perplexed faith. 

It was after the visit of the messengers from 
John that Jesus spoke the strong words which 
showed his warm friendship for his forerunner. 
John had not forfeited his place in the Master's 
heart by his temporary doubting. Jesus knew 
that his disciples might think disparagingly 
of John because he had sent the messengers 
with the question ; and as soon as they were 
gone he began to speak about John, and to 
speak about him in terms of highest praise. 
It is an evidence of true friendship that one 
speaks well of one's friend behind his back. 
Some professed friendship will not stand this 
test. But Jesus spoke not a word of censure 
concerning John after the failure of his faith. 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 45 

On the other hand, he eulogized him in a most 
remarkable way. He spoke of his stability and 
firmness ; John was not a reed shaken with 
the wind, he was not a self-indulgent man, 
courting ease and loving luxury ; he was a man 
ready for any self-denial and hardship. Jesus 
added to this eulogy of John's qualities as a 
man, the statement that no greater soul than 
his had ever been born in this world. This 
was high praise indeed. It illustrates the loy- 
alty of Jesus to the friend who had so honored 
him and was suffering now because of faith- 
fulness to truth and duty. 

There is another incident which shows how 
much Jesus loved John. It was after the 
foul murder of the Baptist. The record is 
very brief. The friends of the dead prophet 
gathered in the prison, and, taking up the 
headless body of their master, they carried it 
away to a reverent, tearful burial. Then they 
went and told Jesus. The narrative says, 
"When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence 
by ship into a desert place apart. " His sor- 
row at the tragic death of his faithful friend 



46 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

made him wish to be alone. When the Jews 
saw Jesus weeping beside the grave of Lazarus 
they said, " Behold how he loved him ! " No 
mention is made of tears when Jesus heard 
of the death of John; but he immediately 
sought to break away from the crowds, to be 
alone, and there is little doubt that when he 
was alone he wept. He loved John, and 
grieved over his death. 

The story of the friendship of Jesus and 
John is very beautiful. John's loyalty and 
faithfulness must have brought real comfort 
to Jesus. Then to John the friendship of 
Jesus must have been full of cheer. 

As we read the story of the Baptist's life, 
with its tragic ending, we are apt to feel 
that he died too soon. He began his public 
work with every promise of success. For a 
few months he preached with great power, 
and thousands flocked to hear him. Then 
came the waning of his popularity, and soon 
he was shut up in a prison, and in a little 
while was cruelly murdered to humor the whim 
of a wicked and vengeful woman. 



JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER. 47 

Was it worth while to be born, and to go 
through years of severe training, only for such 
a fragment of living ? To this question we 
can answer only that John had finished his 
work. He came into the world — a man sent 
from God — to do just one definite thing, — 
to prepare the way for the Messiah. When 
the Messiah had come, John's work was done. 
As the friend of Christ he went home ; and 
elsewhere now, in other realms perhaps, he 
is still serving his Lord. 



CHAPTER IV. 

JESUS' CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 

But if himself he come to thee, and stand 

And reach to thee himself the Holy Cup, 

Pallid and royal, saying, " Drink with me," 

Wilt thou refuse ? Nay, not for paradise ! 

The pale brow will compel thee, the pure hands 

Will minister unto thee ; thou shalt take 

Of that communion through the solemn depths 

Of the dark waters of thine agony, 

With heart that praises him, that yearns to him 

The closer through that hour. 

Ugo BassVs Sermon. 

Every thoughtful reader of the Gospels 
notes two seemingly opposing characteristics 
of Christ's invitations, — their wideness and 
their narrowness. They were broad enough 
to include all men ; yet by their conditions 
they were so narrowed down that only a few 
seemed able to accept them. 

4 8 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 49 

The gospel was for the world. It was as 
broad as the love of God, and that is abso- 
lutely without limit. God loved the world. 
When Jesus went forth among men his heart 
was open to all. He was the patron of no 
particular class. For him there were no out- 
casts whom he might not touch, with whom 
he might not speak in public, or privately, or 
who were excluded from the privileges of 
friendship with him. He spoke of himself as 
the Son of man — not the son of a man, but 
the Son of man, and therefore the brother of 
every man. Whoever bore the image of hu- 
manity had a place in his heart. Wherever he 
found a human need it had an instant claim 
on his sympathy, and he was eager to impart 
a blessing. No man had fallen so low in sin 
that Jesus passed him by without love and 
compassion. To be a man was the passport 
to his heart. 

The invitations which Jesus gave all bear the 
stamp of this exceeding broadness. " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest." "Him that cometh 



50 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

to me I will in no wise cast out." "If any 
man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." 
Such words as these were ever falling from 
his lips. No man or woman, hearing these 
invitations, could ever say, "There is nothing 
there for me." There was no hint of possi- 
ble exclusion for any one. Not a word was 
ever said about any particular class of persons 
who might come, — the righteous, the respect- 
able, the cultured, the unsoiled, the well-born, 
the well-to-do. Jesus had no such words in 
his vocabulary. Whoever labored and was 
heavy laden was invited. Whoever would 
come should be received — would not in any 
wise be cast out. Whoever was athirst was 
bidden to come and drink. 

Some teachers are not so good as their 
teachings. They proclaim the love of God 
for every man, and then make distinctions in 
their treatment of men. Professing love for 
all, they gather their skirts close about them 
when fallen ones pass by. But Jesus lived 
out all of the love of God that he taught. It 
was literally true in his case, that not one who 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 5 I 

came to him was ever cast out. He disre- 
garded the proprieties of righteousness which 
the religious teachers of his own people had 
formulated and fixed. They read in the syna- 
gogue services, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself," but they limited the word neigh- 
bor until it included only the circle of the 
socially and spiritually elite. Jesus taught that 
a man's neighbor is a fellow-man in need, who- 
ever he may be. Then, when the lost and 
the outcast came to him they found the love 
of God indeed incarnate in him, 

At one time we read that all the publicans 
and sinners drew near unto him to hear him. 
The religious teachers of the Jews found sore 
fault with him, saying, " This man receiveth 
sinners, and eateth with them." But he vin- 
dicated his course by telling them that he 
had come for the very purpose of seeking the 
lost ones. On another occasion he said that 
he was a physician, and that the physician's 
mission was not to the whole, but to the sick. 
He had come not to call the righteous, but 
sinners, to repentance. A poor woman who 



52 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS, 

was a sinner, having heard his gracious invita- 
tion, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden," came to his feet, at once 
putting his preaching to the test. She came 
weeping, and, falling at his feet, wet them 
with her tears, and then wiped them with her 
dishevelled hair and kissed them. Then she 
took an alabaster box, and breaking it, poured 
the ointment on his feet. It was a violation 
of all the proprieties to permit such a woman 
to stay at his feet, making such demonstra- 
tions. If he had been a Jewish rabbi, he would 
have thrust her away with execrations, as 
bringing pollution in her touch. But Jesus 
let the woman stay and finish her act of peni- 
tence and love, and then spoke words which 
assured her of forgiveness and peace. 

" She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair 
Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch; 
And he wiped off the soiling of despair 
From her sweet soul, because she loved so much." 

This is but one of the many proofs in 
Jesus' life of the sincerity of the wide invita- 
tions he gave. Continually the lost and fallen 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP, 53 

came to him, for there was something in him 
that made it easy for them to come and tell 
him all the burden of their sin and their 
yearning for a better life. Even one whom 
he afterward chose as an apostle was a publi- 
can when Jesus called him to be his disciple. 
He took him in among his friends, into his 
own inner household ; and now his name is on 
one of the foundations of the heavenly city, 
as an apostle of the Lamb. 

Thus we see how broad was the love of 
Christ, both in word and in act. Toward 
every human life his heart yearned. He had 
a blessing to bestow upon every soul. Who- 
soever would might be a friend of Jesus, and 
come in among those who stood closest to 
him. Not one was shut out. 

Then, there is another class of words which 
appear to limit these wide invitations and this 
gracious love. Again and again Jesus seems 
to discourage discipleship. When men would 
come, he bids them consider and count the 
cost before they decide. One passage tells 
of three aspirants for discipleship, for all of 



54 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

whom he seems to have made it hard to fol- 
low him. 

One man came to him, and with glib and 
easy profession said, " I will follow thee 
whithersoever thou goest." This seemed all 
that could have been asked. No man could 
do more. Yet Jesus discouraged this ardent 
scribe. He saw that he did not know what 
he was saying, that he had not counted the 
cost, and that his devotion would fail in the 
face of the hardship and self-denial which 
discipleship would involve. So he answered, 
"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the 
air have nests ; but the Son of man hath not 
where to lay his head." That is, he painted 
a picture of his own poverty and homeless- 
ness, as if to say, "That is what it will mean 
\ for you to follow me ; are you ready for it ? " 

Then Jesus turned to another, and said to 
him, "Follow me." But this man asked time. 
" Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my 
father." This seemed a reasonable request. 
Filial duties stand high in all inspired teach- 
ing. Yet Jesus said, " No ; leave the dead to 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 55 

bury their own dead ; but go thou and publish 
abroad the kingdom of God." Discipleship 
seems severe in its demands if even a sacred 
duty of love to a father must be foregone that 
the man might go instantly to his work as a 
missionary. 

There was a third case. Another man, over- 
hearing what had been said, proposed also to 
become a disciple — but not yet. "I will 
follow thee; but first suffer me to bid fare- 
well to them that are at my house." That, 
too, appeared only a fit thing to do ; but again 
the answer seems stern and severe. " No 
man, having put his hand to the plough, and 
looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." 
Even the privilege of running home to say 
"Good-by" must be denied to him who fol- 
lows Jesus. 

These incidents show, not that Jesus would 
make it hard and costly for men to be his 
disciples, but that discipleship must be uncon- 
ditional, whatever the cost, and that even the 
holiest duties of human love must be made 
secondary to the work of Christ's kingdom. 



56 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Another marked instance of like teaching was 
in the case of the young ruler who wanted to 
know the way of life. We try to make it 
easy for inquirers to begin to follow Christ, 
but Jesus set a hard task for this rich young 
man. He must give up all his wealth, and 
come empty-handed with the new- Master. 
Why did he so discourage this earnest seeker ? 
He saw into his heart, and perceived that he 
could not be a true disciple unless he first 
won a victory over himself. The issue was 
his money or Jesus — which ? The way was 
made so hard that for that day, at least, the 
young man turned away, clutching his money, 
leaving Jesus. 

Really, a like test was made in every disci- 
pleship. Those who followed him left all, and 
went empty-handed with him. They were re- 
quired to give up father and mother, and wife 
and children, and lands, and to take up their 
cross and follow him. 

Why were the broad invitations of the heart 
of Jesus so narrowed in their practical applica- 
tion ? The answer is very simple. Jesus was 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP, $7 

the revealing of God — God manifest in the 
flesh. He had come into this world not merely 
to heal a few sick people, to bring back joy 
to a few darkened homes by the restoring of 
their dead, to formulate a system of moral 
and ethical teachings, to start a wave of kind- 
liness and a ministry of mercy and love ; he 
had come to save a lost world, to lift men up 
out of sinfulness into holiness. 

There was only one way to do this, — men 
must be brought back into loyalty to God. 
Jesus astonishes us by the tremendous claims 
and demands he makes. He says that men 
must come unto him if they would find rest ; 
that they must believe on him if they would 
have everlasting life ; that they must love him 
more than any human friend ; that they must 
obey him with absolute, unquestioning obe- 
dience ; that they must follow him as the su- 
preme and only guide of their life, committing 
all their present and eternal interests into his 
hands. In a word, he puts himself deliberately 
into the place of God, demanding for himself 
all that God demands, and then promising to 



58 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

those who accept him all the blessings that 
God promises to his children. 

This was the way Jesus sought to save men. 
As the human revealing of God, coming down 
close to humanity, and thus bringing God 
within their reach, he said, " Believe on me, 
love me, trust me, and follow me, and I will 
lift you up to eternal blessedness." While 
the invitation was universal, the blessings it 
offered could be given only to those who would 
truly receive Christ as the Son of God. If Jesus 
seemed to demand hard things of those who 
would follow him, it was because in no other 
way could men be saved. No slight and easy 
bond would bind them to him, and only by 
their attachment to him could they be led 
into the kingdom of God. If he sometimes 
seemed to discourage discipleship, it was that 
no one might be deceived as to the meaning 
of the new life to which Jesus was inviting 
men. He would have no followers who did 
not first count the cost, and know whether 
they were ready to go with him. Men could 
be lifted up into a heavenly life only by a 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 59 

friendship with Jesus which would prove 
stronger than all other ties. 

Religion, therefore, is a passion for Christ. 
" I have only one passion," said Zinzendorf, 
" and that is he." Love for Christ is the 
power that during these nineteen centuries 
has been transforming the world. Law could 
never have done it, though enforced by the 
most awful majesty. The most perfect moral 
code, though proclaimed with supreme author- 
ity, would never have changed darkness to 
light, cruelty to humaneness, rudeness to gen- 
tleness. What is it that gives the gospel its 
resistless power? It is the Person at the 
heart of it. Men are not called to a religion, 
to a creed, to a code of ethics, to an ecclesi- 
astical system, — they are called to love and 
follow a Person. 

But what is it in Jesus that so draws men, 
that wins their allegiance away from every 
other master, that makes them ready to leave 
all for his sake, and to follow him through 
peril and sacrifice, even to death ? Is it his 
wonderful teaching? "No man ever spake 



60 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

like this man." Is it his power as revealed 
in his miracles ? Is it his sinlessness ? The 
most malignant scrutiny could find no fault in 
him. Is it the perfect beauty of his character? 
Not one nor all of these will account for the 
wonderful attraction of Jesus. Love is the 
secret. He came into the world to reveal 
the love of God — he was the love of God in 
human flesh. His life was all love. In a most 
wonderful way during all his life did he re- 
veal love. Men saw it in his face, and felt it 
in his touch, and heard it in his voice. This 
was the great fact which his disciples felt in 
his life. His friendship was unlike any friend- 
ship they had ever seen before, or even dreamed 
of. It was this that drew them to him, and 
made them love him so deeply, so tenderly. 
Nothing but love will kindle love. Power will 
not do it. Holiness will not do it. Gifts wil] 
not do it — men will take your gifts, and then 
repay you with hatred. But love begets love ; 
heart responds to heart. Jesus loved. 

But the love he revealed in his life, in his 
tender friendship, was not the supremest man- 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 6 1 

ifesting of his love. He crowned it all by giv- 
ing his life. " I am the good shepherd : the 
good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." 
This was the most wonderful exhibition of 
love the world had ever seen. Now and then 
some one had been willing to die for a choice 
and prized friend ; but Jesus died for a world 
of enemies. It was not for the beloved disci- 
ple and for the brave Peter that he gave his 
life, — then we might have understood it, — 
but it was for the race of sinful men that he 
poured out his most precious blood, — the blood 
of eternal redemption. It is this marvellous 
love in Jesus which attracts men to him. His 
life, and especially his cross, declares to every 
one : " God loves you. The Son of God gave 
himself for you." Jesus himself explained the 
wonderful secret in his words : " I, if I be 
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto me." It is on his cross that his marvel- 
lous power is most surpassingly revealed. The 
secret of the attraction of the cross is love. 
" He loved me, and he gave himself for 
me. 



62 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Thus we find hints of what Jesus is as a 
friend — what he was to his first disciples, 
what he is to-day. His is perfect friendship. 
The best and richest human friendships are 
only little fragments of the perfect ideal. Even 
these we prize as the dearest things on earth. 
They are more precious than rarest gems. We 
would lose all other things rather than give 
up our friends. They bring to us deep joys, 
sweet comforts, holy inspirations. Life with- 
out friendship would be empty and lonely. 
Love is indeed the greatest thing. Nothing 
else in all the world will fill and satisfy the 
heart. Even earth's friendships are priceless. 
Yet the best and truest of them are only 
fragments of the perfect friendship. They 
bring us only little cupfuls of blessing. Their 
gentleness is marred by human infirmity, and 
sometimes turns to harshness. Their help- 
fulness at best is impulsive and uncertain, and 
ofttimes is inopportune and ill-timed. 

But the friendship of Jesus is perfect. Its 
touch is always gentle and full of healing. 
Its helpfulness is always wise. Its tenderness 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 63 

is like the warmth of a heavenly summer, 
brooding over the life which accepts it. All 
the love of God pours forth in the friend- 
ship of Jesus. To be his beloved is to be held 
in the clasp of the everlasting arms. " I and 
my Father are one," said Jesus ; his friend- 
ship, therefore, is the friendship of the Father. 
Those who accept it in truth find their lives 
flooded with a wealth of blessing. 

Creeds have their place in the Christian 
life ; their articles are the great framework of 
truth about which the fabric rises and from 
which it receives its strength. Worship is 
important, if it is vitalized by faith and the 
Holy Spirit. Rites have their sacred value as 
the channels through which divine grace is 
communicated. But that which is vital in all 
spiritual life is the friendship of Jesus, com- 
ing to us in whatever form it may. To know 
the love of Christ which passeth knowledge is 
living religion. Creeds and services and rites 
and sacraments bring blessing to us only as 
they interpret to us this love, and draw us 
into closer personal relations with Christ. 



64 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

" Behold him now where he comes! 

Not the Christ of our subtile creeds, 
But the light of our hearts, of our homes, 

Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs, 
The brother of want and blame, 
The lover of women and men." 

The friendship of Jesus takes our poor 
earthly lives, and lifts them up out of the 
dust into beauty and blessedness. It changes 
everything for us. It makes us children of 
God in a real and living sense. It brings us 
into fellowship with all that is holy and true. 
It kindles in us a friendship for Christ, turn- 
ing all the tides of our life into new and holy 
channels. It thus transforms us into the like- 
ness of our Friend, whose we are, and whom 
we serve. 

Thus Jesus is saving the world by renew- 
ing men's lives. He is setting up the king- 
dom of heaven on the earth. His subjects 
are won, not by force of arms, not by a dis- 
play of Sinaitic terrors, but by the force of 
love. Men are taught that God loves them; 
they see that love first in the life of Jesus, 
then on his cross, where he died as the Lamb 



CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. 65 

of God, bearing the sin of the world. Under 
the mighty sway of that love they yield their 
hearts to heaven's King. Thus .love's con- 
quests are going on. The friendship of Jesus 
is changing earth's sin and evil into heaven's 
holiness and beauty. 



CHAPTER V. 

JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 

He seeks not thine, but thee, such as thou art, 
For lo, his banner over thee is love. 

Christina G. Rossetti. 

If you loved only what were worth your love, 
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you. 
Make the low nature better by your throes ! 
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above. 

Browning. 

Nothing in life is more important than the 
choosing of friends. Many young people wreck 
all by wrong choices, taking into their life 
those who by their influence drag them down. 
Many a man's moral failure dates from the 
day he chose a wrong friend. Many a wo- 
man's life of sorrow or evil began with the 
letting into her heart of an unworthy friend- 
ship. On the other hand, many a career of 
happiness, of prosperity, of success, of upward 

66 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 67 

climbing, may be traced to the choice of a 
pure, noble, rich-hearted, inspiring friend. Mrs. 
Browning asked Charles Kingsley, "What is 
the secret of your life ? Tell me, that I may 
make mine beautiful too." He replied, " I 
had a friend." There are many who have 
reached eminence of character or splendor of 
life who could give the same answer. They 
had a friend who came into their life at the 
right time, sent from God, and inspired in 
them whatever is beautiful in their character, 
whatever is worthy and noble in their career. 

We may not put our Lord's choice of his 
apostles on precisely the same plane as our 
selecting of friends, as those men were to be 
more than ordinary friends ; he was to put 
his mantle upon them, and they were to be 
the founders of his Church. Nevertheless, we 
may take lessons from the story for ourselves. 

Jesus chose his friends deliberately. His 
disciples had been gathering about him for 
months. It was at least a year after the be- 
ginning of his public ministry that he chose 
the Twelve. He had had ample time to get 



68 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

well acquainted with the company of his fol- 
lowers, to test them, to study their character, 
to learn their qualities of strength or weak- 
ness. 

Many fatal mistakes in the choosing of 
friends come from unfit haste. We would 
better take time to know our possible friends, 
and be sure that we know them well, before 
making the solemn compact that seals the at- 
tachment. 

Jesus made his choice of friends a subject 
of prayer. He spent a whole night in prayer 
with God, and then came in the morning to 
choose his apostles. If Jesus needed thus to 
pray before choosing his friends, how much 
more should we seek God's counsel before 
taking a new friendship into our life ! We 
cannot know what it may mean to us, whither 
it may lead us, what sorrow, care, or pain it 
may bring to us, what touches of beauty or of 
marring it may put upon our soul, and we 
dare not admit it unless God gives it to us. 
In nothing do young people need more the 
guidance of divine wisdom than when they 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 69 

are settling the question of who shall be their 
friends. At the Last Supper Jesus said in 
his prayer, referring to his disciples, " Thine 
they were, and thou gavest them me." It 
makes a friendship very sacred to be able to 
say, "God gave it to me. God sent me this 
friend." 

In choosing his friends, Jesus thought not 
chiefly of the comfort and help they would be 
to him, but far more of what he might be to 
them. He did crave friendship for himself. 
His heart needed it just as any true human 
heart does. He welcomed affection whenever 
any one brought the gift to him. He accepted 
the friendship of the poor, of the children, of 
those he helped. We cannot understand how 
much the Bethany home was to him, with its 
confidence, its warmth, its shelter, its tender 
affection. One of the most pathetic incidents 
in the whole Gospel story is the hunger of 
Jesus for sympathy in the garden, when he 
came again and again to his human friends, 
hoping to find them alert in watchful love, 
and found them asleep. It was a cry of deep 



70 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

disappointment which came from his lips, 
" Could ye not watch with me one hour?" 
Jesus craved the blessing of friendship for 
himself, and in choosing the Twelve expected 
comfort and strength from his fellowship with 
them. 

But his deepest desire was that he might 
be a blessing to them. He came "not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister ;" not to have 
friends, but to be a friend. He chose the 
Twelve that he might lift them up to honor 
and good ; that he might purify, refine, and 
enrich their lives ; that he might prepare them 
to be his witnesses, the conservators of his 
gospel, the interpreters to the world of his 
life and teachings. He sought nothing for 
himself, but every breath he drew was full 
of unselfish love. 

We should learn from Jesus that the essen- 
tial quality in the heart of friendship is not 
the desire to have friends, but the desire to be 
a friend ; not to get good and help from others, 
but to impart blessing to others. Many of 
the sighings for friendship which we have are 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. J I 

merely selfish longings, — a desire for happi- 
ness, for pleasure, for the gratification of the 
heart, which friends would bring. If the de- 
sire were to be a friend, to do others good, 
to serve and to give help, it would be a far 
more Christlike longing, and would transform 
the life and character. 

We are surprised at the kind of men Jesus 
chose for his friends. We would suppose that 
he, the Son of God, coming from heaven, would 
have gathered about him as his close and inti- 
mate companions the most refined and culti- 
vated men of his nation, — men of intelligence, 
of trained mind, of wide influence. Instead 
of going to Jerusalem, however, to choose his 
apostles from among rabbis, priests, scribes, 
and rulers, he selected them from among the 
plain people, largely from among fishermen of 
Galilee. One reason for this was that he 
must choose these inner friends from the com- 
pany which had been drawn to him and were 
already his followers, in true sympathy with 
him ; and there were none of the great, the 
learned, the cultured, among these. But an- 



72 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

other reason was, that he cared more for qual- 
ities of the heart than for rank, position, 
name, worldly influence, or human wisdom. He 
wanted near him only those who would be of 
the same mind with him, and whom he could 
train into loyal, sympathetic apostles. 

Jesus took these untutored, undisciplined 
men into his own household, and at once be- 
gan to prepare them for their great work. It 
is worthy of note, that instead of scattering 
his teachings broadcast among the people, so 
that who would might gather up his words, 
and diffusing his influence throughout a mass 
of disciples, while distinctly and definitely im- 
pressing none ineffaceably, Jesus chose twelve 
men, and concentrated his influence upon them. 
He took them into the closest relations to him- 
self, taught them the great truths of his king- 
dom, impressed upon them the stamp of his 
own life, and breathed into them his own 
spirit. We think of the apostles as great men ; 
they did become great. Their influence filled 
many lands — fills all the world to-day. They 
sit on thronec, judging all the tribes of men. 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 73 

But all that they became, they became through 
the friendship of Jesus. He gave them all 
their greatness. He trained them until their 
rudeness grew into refined culture. No doubt 
he gave much time to them in private. They 
were with him continually. They saw all his 
life. 

It was a high privilege to live with Jesus 
those three years, — eating with him, walking 
with him, hearing all his conversations, wit- 
nessing his patience, his kindness, his thought- 
fulness. It was almost like living in heaven ; 
for Jesus was the Son of God — God man- 
ifest in the flesh. When Philip said to Jesus, 
" Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth 
us," Jesus answered, " He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." Living with Jesus 
was, therefore, living with God — his glory 
tempered by the gentle humanity in which it 
was veiled, but no less divine because of this. 
For three years the disciples lived with God. 
No wonder that their lives were transformed, 
and that the best that was in them was wooed 
out by the blessed summer weather of love in 
which they moved. 



74 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

" He chose twelve." Probably this was be- 
cause there were twelve tribes of Israel, and 
the number was to be continued. One evan- 
gelist says that he sent them out two and 
two. Why by two and two ? With all the 
world to evangelize, would it not have been 
better if they had gone out one by one ? Then 
they would have reached twice as many points. 
Was it not a waste of force, of power, to send 
two to the same place ? 

No doubt Jesus had reasons. It would have 
been lonely for one man to go by himself. If 
there were two, one would keep the other 
company. There was opposition to the gospel 
in those days, and it would have been hard for 
one to endure persecution alone. The hand- 
clasp of a brother would make the heart braver 
and stronger. We do not know how much 
we owe to our companionships, how they 
strengthen us, how often we would fail and 
sink down without them. 

One of the finest definitions of happiness in 
literature is that given by Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. " Happiness," said the Autocrat, " is 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. ?$ 

four feet on the fender/' When his beloved 
wife was gone, and an old friend came in to 
condole with him, he said, shaking his gray 
head, " Only two feet on the fender now." 
Congenial companionship is wonderfully in- 
spiring. Aloneness is pain. You cannot kin- 
dle a fire with one coal. A log will not burn 
alone. But put two coals or two logs side by 
side, and the fire kindles and blazes and burns 
hotly. Jesus yoked his apostles in twos that 
mutual friendship might inspire them both. 

There was another reason for mating the 
Twelve. Each of them was only a fragment 
of a man — not one of them was full-rounded, 
a complete man, strong at every point. Each 
had a strength of his own, with a correspond- 
ing weakness. Then Jesus yoked them to- 
gether so that each two made one good man. 
The hasty, impetuous, self-confident Peter 
needed the counterbalancing of the cautious, 
conservative Andrew. Thomas the doubter was 
matched by Matthew the strong believer. It 
was not an accidental grouping by which the 
Twelve fell into six parts. Jesus knew what 



?6 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

was in man ; and he yoked these men together 
in a way which brought out the best that was 
in each of them, and by thus blending their 
lives, turned their very faults and weaknesses 
into beauty and strength. He did not try to 
make them all alike. He made no effort to 
have Peter grow quiet and gentle like John, 
or Thomas become an enthusiastic, unquestion- 
ing believer like Matthew. He sought for 
each man's personality, and developed that. 
He knew that to try to recast Peter's tremen- 
dous energy into staidness and caution would 
only rob him of what was best in his nature. 
He found room in his apostle family for as 
many different types of temperament as there 
were men, setting the frailties of one over 
against the excessive virtues of the other. 

It is interesting to note the method of Jesus 
in training his apostles. The aim of true 
friendship anywhere is not to make life easy 
for one's friend, but to make something of the 
friend. That is God's method. He does not 
hurry to take away every burden under which 
he sees us bending. He does not instantly 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. *]>] 

answer our prayer for relief, when we begin 
to cry to him about the difficulty we have, or 
the trial we are facing, or the sacrifice we are 
making. He does not spare us hardship, loss, 
or pain. He wants not to make things easy 
for us, but to make something of us. We 
grow under burdens. It is poor, mistaken 
fathering or mothering that thinks only of 
saving a child from hard tasks or severe disci- 
pline. It is weak friendship that seeks only 
pleasure and indulgence for a loved one. "The 
chief want in life is somebody who shall make 
us do the best we can." 

Jesus was the truest of friends. He never 
tried to make the burden light, the path 
smooth, the struggle easy. He wished to 
make men of his apostles, — men who could 
stand up and face the world ; men whose char- 
acter would reflect the beauty of holiness in 
its every line ; men in whose hands his gospel 
would be safe when they went out as his am- 
bassadors. He set for each apostle a high 
ideal, and then helped him to work up to the 
ideal. He taught them that the law of the 



78 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

cross is the law of life, that the saving of one's 
life is the losing of it, and that only when we 
lose our life, as men rate it, giving it out in 
love's service, do we really save it. 

It is not easy to make a man. It is said 
that the violin-makers in distant lands, by 
breaking and mending with skilful hands, at 
last produce instruments having a more won- 
derful capacity than ever was possible to them 
when new, unbroken and whole. Whether 
this be true or not of violins, it certainly is 
true of human lives. We cannot merely grow 
into strength, beauty, nobleness, and power of 
helpfulness, without discipline, pain, and cost. 
It is written even of Jesus himself that he was 
made perfect through suffering. There was 
no sin in him ; but his perfectness as a sympa- 
thizing Friend, as a helpful Saviour, came 
through struggle, trial, pain, and sorrow. Not 
one of the apostles reached his royal strength 
as a man, as a helper of men, as a represen- 
tative of Jesus, without enduring loss and suf- 
fering. No man who ever rises to a place of 
real worth and usefulness in the world walks 



/ESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 79 

on a rose-strewn path. We never can be made 
fit for anything beautiful and worthy without 
cost of pain and tears. Always it is true that — 

"Things that hurt and things that mar 
Shape the man for perfect praise; 
Shock and strain and ruin are 

Friendlier than the smiling days." 

How about ourselves ? Life is made very 
real to our thought when we remember that 
in all the experiences of joy and sorrow, pleas- 
ure and pain, success and failure, health and 
sickness, quiet or struggle, God is making men 
of us. Then he watches us to see if we fail. 
Here is a man who is passing through sore 
trial. For many months his wife has been a 
great sufferer. All the while he has been 
carrying a heavy burden, — a financial burden, 
a burden of sympathy ; for every moment's 
pain that his wife has suffered has been like 
a sword in his own heart, — burdens of care, 
with broken nights and weary days. We may 
be sure of God's tender interest in the wife 
who suffers in the sick-room ; but his eye is 
even more intently fixed upon him who is bear- 



80 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

ing the burden of sympathy and care. He is 
watching to see if the man will stand the test, 
and grow sweeter and stronger. Everything 
hard or painful in a Christian's life is another 
opportunity for him to get a new victory, and 
become a little more a man. 

It is remarkable how little we know about 
the apostles. A few of them are fairly prom- 
inent. Peter and James and John we know 
quite well, as their names are made familiar 
in the inspired story. Matthew we know by 
the Gospel he wrote. Thomas we remember 
by his doubts. Another Judas, not Iscariot, 
probably left us a little letter. Of the rest 
we know almost nothing but their names. 
Indeed, few Bible readers can give even the 
names of all the Twelve. 

No doubt one reason why no more is told 
us about the apostles is that the Bible mag- 
nifies only one name. It is not a book of 
biographies, but the book of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Each apostle had a sacred friendship 
all his own with his Master, a friendship with 
which no other could intermeddle. We can 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 8 1 

imagine the quiet talks, the long walks with 
the deep communings, the openings of heart, 
the confessions of weakness and failure, the 
many prayers together. We may be very sure 
that through those three wonderful years there 
ran twelve stories of holy friendship, with their 
blessed revealings of the Master's heart to the 
heart of each man. But not a word of all this 
is written in the New Testament. It was too 
sacred to be recorded for any eye of earth to 
read. 

We may be sure, too, that each man of 
the Twelve did a noble work after the Ascen- 
sion, but no pen wrote the narratives for pres- 
ervation. There are traditions, but there is 
in them little that is certainly history. The 
Acts is not the acts of the apostles. The book 
tells a little about John, a little more about 
Peter, most about Paul, and of the others 
gives nothing but a list of their names in the 
first chapter. 

Yet we need not trouble ourselves about 
this. It is the same with the good and the 
useful in every age. A few names are pre- 



82 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

served, but the great multitude are forgotten. 
Earth keeps scant record of its benefactors. 
But there is a place where every smallest 
kindness done in the name of Christ is re- 
corded and remembered. 

Long, long ages ago a beautiful fern grew 
in a deep vale, nodding in the breeze. One 
day it fell, complaining as it sank away that 
no one would remember its grace and beauty. 
The other day a geologist went out with his 
hammer in the interest of his science. He 
struck a rock ; and there in the seam lay the 
form of a fern — every leaf, every fibre, the 
most delicate traceries of the leaves. It was 
the fern which ages since grew and dropped 
into the indistinguishable mass of vegetation. 
It perished ; but its memorial was preserved, 
and to-day is made manifest. 

So it is with the stories of the obscure 
apostles, and of all beautiful lives which have 
wrought for God and for man and have van- 
ished from earth. Nothing is lost, nothing 
is forgotten. The memorials are in other lives, 
and some day every touch and trace and in- 



JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS. 83 

fluence and impression will be revealed. In 
the book of The Revelation we are told that 
in the foundations of the heavenly city are 
the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 
The New Testament does not tell the story 
of their worthy lives, but it is cut deep in the 
eternal rock, where all eyes shall see it for- 
ever. 

On the lives of these chosen friends Jesus 
impressed his own image. His blessed divine- 
human friendship transformed them into men 
who went to the ends of the world for him, 
carrying his name. It was a new and strange 
influence on the earth — this holy friendship 
of Jesus Christ started in the hearts and lives 
of the apostles. At once it began to make 
this old world new. Those who believed re- 
ceived the same wonderful friendship into their 
own hearts. They loved each other in a way 
men had never loved before. Christians lived 
together as one family. 

Ever since the day of Pentecost this won- 
derful friendship of Jesus has been spreading 
wherever the gospel has gone. It has given 



84 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

to the world its Christian homes with their 
tender affections ; it has built hospitals and 
asylums, and established charitable institutions 
of all kinds in every place where its story has 
been told. From the cross of Jesus a wave of 
tenderness, like the warmth of summer, has 
rolled over all lands. The friendship of Jesus, 
left in the hearts of his apostles, as his legacy 
to the world, has wrought marvellously ; and 
its ministry and influence will extend until 
everything unlovely shall cease from earth, and 
the love of God shall pervade all life. 



CHAPTER VI. 

JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 

My Lord, my Love! in pleasant pain 

How often have I said, 
"Blessed that John who on thy breast 

Laid down his head." 
It was that contact all divine 

Transformed him from above, 
And made him amongst men the man 

To show forth holy love. 

Christina G. Rossetti. 

Love is regenerating the world. It is the 
love of God that is working this mighty trans- 
formation. The world was cold and loveless 
before Christ came. Of course there always 
was love in the race, — father-love, mother- 
love, filial love, love for country. There have 
always been human friendships which were 
constant, tender, and true, whose stories shine 
in bright lustre among the records of life. 
Natural affection there has always been, but 

85 



86 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Christian love was not in the world till Christ 
came. 

The incarnation was the breaking into this 
world of the love of God. For three and 
thirty years Jesus walked among men, pouring 
out love in every word, in every act, in all 
his works, and in every influence of his life. 
Then on the cross his heart broke, spilling 
its love upon the earth. As Mary's ointment 
filled all the house where it was emptied out, 
so the love of God poured out in Christ's life 
and death is filling all the world. 

Jesus put his love into human hearts that 
it might be carried everywhere. Instantly 
there was a wondrous change. The story of 
the Church after the day of Pentecost shows 
a spirit among the disciples of Christ which 
the world had never seen before. They had 
all things common. The strong helped the 
weak. They formed a fellowship which was 
almost heavenly. From that time to the pres- 
ent the leaven of love has been working. It 
has slowly wrought itself into every depart- 
ment of life, — into art, literature, music, laws, 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 8 J 

education, morals. Every hospital, orphanage, 
asylum, and reformatory in the world has been 
inspired by the love of Christ. Christian civ- 
ilization is a product of this same divine affec- 
tion working through the nations. 

Perhaps no other of the Master's disciples 
has done so much in the interpreting and the 
diffusing of the love of Christ in the world 
as the beloved disciple has done. Peter was 
the mightiest force at the beginning in the 
founding of the Church. Then came Paul with 
his tremendous missionary energy, carrying 
Christianity to the ends of the earth. Each 
of these apostles was greatest in his own way 
and place. But John has done more than 
either of these to bless the world with love. 
His influence is everywhere. He is likest 
Jesus of all the disciples. His influence is 
slowly spreading among men. We see it in 
the enlarging spirit of love among Christians, 
in the increase of philanthropy, in the grow- 
ing sentiment that war must cease among 
Christian nations, all disputes to be settled 
by arbitration, and in the feeling of universal 



88 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

brotherhood which is softening all true men's 
hearts toward each other. 

It cannot but be intensely interesting to 
trace the story of the friendship of Jesus and 
John, for it was in this hallowed friendship 
that John learned all that he gave the world 
in his life and words. We are able to fix its 
beginning — when Jesus and John met for the 
first time. One day John the Baptist was 
standing by the Jordan with two of his disci- 
ples. One of these was Andrew; and the 
other we know was John — we know it be- 
cause in John's own Gospel, where the incident 
is recorded, no name is given. The two young 
men had not yet seen Jesus ; but the Baptist 
knew him, and pointed him out as he passed 
by, saying, " Behold the Lamb of God ! " 

The two young men went after Jesus, no 
doubt eager to speak with him. Hearing their 
footsteps behind him, he turned, and asked 
them what they sought. They asked, " Rabbi, 
where abidest thou ? " He said, " Come, and 
ye shall see." They gladly accepted the invi- 
tation, went with him to his lodgings, and 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 89 

remained until the close of the day. We have 
no account of what took place during those 
happy hours. It would be interesting to know 
what Jesus said to his visitors, but not a word 
of the conversation has been preserved. We 
may be sure, however, that the visit made a 
deep impression on John. 

Most days in our lives are unmarked by any 
special event. There are thousands of them 
that seem just alike, with their common rou- 
tine. Once or twice, however, in the lifetime 
of almost every person, there is a day which 
is made forever memorable by some event or 
occurrence, — the first meeting with one who 
fills a large place in one's after years, a com- 
pact of sacred friendship, a revealing of some 
new truth, a decision which brought rich bless- 
ing, or some other experience which set the 
day forever apart among all days. 

John lived to be a very old man ; but to his 
latest years he must have remembered the 
day when he first met Jesus, and began with 
him the friendship which brought him such 
blessing. We may be sure that as at their 



go THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

first meeting the soul of Jonathan was knit 
with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved 
him as his own soul, so at this first meeting 
the soul of John was knit with the soul of 
Jesus in a holy friendship which brought un- 
speakable good to his life. There was that 
in Jesus which at once touched all that was 
best in John, and called out the sweetest music 
of his soul. 

' ' Thou shalt know him when he comes 
Not by any din of drums, 
Nor the vantage of his airs; 
Neither by his crown, 
Nor by his gown, 
Nor by anything he wears. 
He shall only well-known be 
By the holy harmony 
That his coming makes in thee !" 

John calls himself the " disciple whom Jesus 
loved. " This designation gives him a distinc- 
tion even among the Master's personal friends. 
Jesus loved all the apostles, but there were 
three who belonged in an inner circle. Then, 
of these three, John was the best beloved. We 
are not told what it was in John that gave him 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 9 1 

this highest honor. He was probably a cousin 
of Jesus, as it is thought by many that their 
mothers were sisters. This blood relationship, 
however, would not account for the strong 
love that bound them together. There must 
have been certain qualities in John which fitted 
him in a peculiar way for being the closest 
friend of Jesus. 

We know that John's personality was very 
winning. He was only a fisherman, and in 
his youth lacked opportunities for acquiring 
knowledge or refinement. If Mary and Salome 
were sisters, the blood of David's line was in 
John as well as in Jesus. It is something to 
have back of one's birth a long and noble 
descent. Besides, John was one of those rare 
men " who appear to be formed of finer clay 
than their neighbors, and cast in a gentler 
mould." Evidently he was by nature a man 
of sympathetic spirit, one born to be a friend. 

The study of John's writings helps us to 
answer our question. Not once in all his 
Gospel does he refer to himself by name ; yet 
as one reads the wonderful chapters, one is 



92 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

aware of a spirit, an atmosphere, of sweetness. 
There are fields and meadows in which the 
air is laden with fragrance, and yet no flowers 
can be seen. But looking closely, one finds, 
low on the ground, hidden by the tall grasses, 
a multitude of little lowly flowers. It is from 
these that the perfume comes. In every com- 
munity there are humble, quiet lives, almost 
unheard of among men, who shed a subtle 
influence on all about them. Thus it is in the 
chapters of John's Gospel. The name of the 
writer nowhere appears, but the charm of his 
spirit pervades the whole book. 

In the designation which he adopts for 
himself, there is a fine revealing of character. 
There is a beautiful self-obliteration in the 
hiding away of the author's personality that 
only the name and glory of Jesus may be seen. 
There are some good men, who, even when 
trying to exalt and honor their Lord, cannot 
resist the temptation to write their own name 
large, that those who see the Master may also 
see the Master's friend. In John there is an 
utter absence of this spirit. As the Baptist, 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 93 

when asked who he was, refused to give his 
name, and said he was only a voice proclaim- 
ing the coming of the King, so John spoke of 
himself only as one whom the Master loved. 

We must note, too, that he does not speak 
of himself as the disciple who loved Jesus, — 
this would have been to boast of himself as 
loving the Master more than the other disci- 
ples did, — but as the disciple whom Jesus 
loved. In this distinction lies one of the sub- 
tlest secrets of Christian peace. Our hope 
does not rest in our love for Jesus, but in his 
love for us. Our love at the best is variable 
in its moods. To-day it glows with warmth 
and joy, and we say we could die for Christ ; 
to-morrow, in some depression, we question 
whether we really love him at all, our feel- 
ing responds so feebly to his name. A peace 
that depends on our loving Christ is as va- 
riable as our own consciousness. But when 
it is Christ's love for us that is our depend- 
ence, our peace is undisturbed by any earthly 
changes. 

Thus we find in John a reposeful spirit. He 



94 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

was content to be lowly. He knew how to 
trust. His spirit was gentle. He was of a 
deeply spiritual nature. Yet we must not 
think of him as weak or effeminate. Perhaps 
painters have helped to give this impression of 
him ; but it is one that is not only untrue, but 
dishonoring. John was a man of noble strength. 
In his soul, under his quietness and sweetness 
of spirit, dwelt a mighty energy. But he was 
a man of love, and had learned the lesson of 
divine peace ; thus he was a self-controlled 
man. 

These are hints of the character of the dis- 
ciple whom Jesus loved, whom he chose to be 
his closest friend. He was only a lad when 
Jesus first met him, and we must remember 
that the John we chiefly know was the man 
as he developed under the influence of Jesus. 
What Jesus saw in the youth who sat down 
beside him in his lodging-place that day, drank 
in his words, and opened his soul to him as a 
rose to the morning sun, was a nature rich 
in its possibilities of noble and beautiful char- 
acter. The John we know is the man as he 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 95 

ripened in the summer of Christ's love. He 
is a product of pure Christ-culture. His young 
soul responded to every inspiration in his 
Master, and developed into rarer loveliness 
every day. Doubtless one of the qualities in 
John that fitted -him to be the closest friend 
of Jesus was his openness of heart, which made 
him such an apt learner, so ready to respond 
to every touch of Christ's hand. 

It would be interesting to trace the story of 
this holy friendship through the three years 
Jesus and John were together, but only a little 
of the wonderful narrative is written. Some 
months after the first meeting, there was an- 
other beside the sea. For some reason John 
and his companions had taken up their fishing 
again. Jesus came by in the early morning, 
and found the men greatly discouraged because 
they had been out all night and had caught 
nothing. He told them to push out, and to 
cast their net again, telling them where to cast 
it. The result was a great draught of fishes. 
It was a revealing of divine power which 
mightily impressed the fishermen. He then 



g6 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

bade them to follow him, and said he would 
make them become fishers of men. Immedi- 
ately they left the ship, and went with Jesus. 

Thus John had now committed himself alto- 
gether to his new Master. From this time he 
remained with Jesus, following him wherever 
he went. He was in his school, and was an apt 
scholar. A little later there came another call. 
Jesus chose twelve men to be apostles, and 
among them was the beloved disciple. This 
choice and call brought him into yet closer 
fellowship with Jesus. Now the transforma- 
tion of character would go on more rapidly 
because of the constancy and the closeness of 
John's association with his Master. 

A peculiar designation is given to the broth- 
ers James and John. Jesus surnamed them 
Boanerges, the sons of thunder. There must 
have been a meaning in such a name given 
by Jesus himself. Perhaps the figure of thun- 
der suggests capacity for energy — that the 
soul of John was charged, as it were, with fiery 
zeal. It appears to us, as we read John's writ- 
ings, that this could not have been true. He 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 97 

seems such a man of love that we cannot think 
of him as ever being possessed of an opposite 
feeling. But there is evidence that by nature 
he was full of just such energy held in reserve. 
We see John chiefly in his writings ; and these 
were the fruit of his mellow old age, when 
love's lessons had been well learned. It seems 
likely that in his youth he had in his breast 
a naturally quick, fiery temper. But under the 
culture of Jesus this spirit was brought into 
complete mastery. We have one illustration 
of this earlier natural feeling in a familiar 
incident. The people of a certain village re- 
fused to receive the Master, and John and his 
brother wished to call down fire from heaven 
to consume them. But Jesus reminded them 
that he was not in the world to destroy men's 
lives, but to save them. 

We know not how often this lesson had to 
be taught to John before he became the apostle 
of love. It was well on in St. Paul's old age 
that he said he had learned in whatsoever state 
he was therein to be content. It is a comfort 
to us to know that he was not always able 



98 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

to say this, and that the lesson had to be 
learned by him just as it has to be learned 
by us. It is a comfort to us also to be per- 
mitted to believe that John had to learn to be 
the loving, gentle disciple he became in later 
life, and that the lesson was not an easy one. 

It is instructive also to remember that it 
was through his friendship with Jesus that 
John received his sweetness and lovingness of 
character. An old Persian apologue tells that 
one found a piece of fragrant clay in his gar- 
den, and that when asked how it got its per- 
fume the clay replied, " One laid me on a 
rose." John lived near the heart of Jesus, 
and the love of that heart of gentleness entered 
his soul and transformed him. There is no 
other secret for any who would learn love's 
great lesson. Abiding in Christ, Christ abides 
also in us, and we are made like him because 
he lives in us. 

John's distinction of being one of the Mas- 
ter's closest friends brought him several times 
into experiences of peculiar sacredness. He 
witnessed the transfiguration, when for an hour 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 99 

the real glory of the Christ shone out through 
his investiture of flesh. This was a vision 
John never forgot. It must have impressed 
itself deeply upon his soul. He was also one 
of those who were led into the inner shadows 
of Gethsemane, to be near Jesus while he suf- 
fered, and to comfort him with love. 

This last experience especially suggests to us 
something of what the friendship of John was 
to Jesus. There is no doubt that this friend- 
ship brought to John immeasurable comfort 
and blessing, enriching his life, and transform- 
ing his character. But what was the friend- 
ship to Jesus ? There is no doubt that it was 
a great deal to him. He craved affection and 
sympathy, as every noble heart does just in 
the measure of its humanness. One of the 
saddest elements of the Gethsemane sorrow 
was the disappointment of Jesus, when, hungry 
for love, he went back to his chosen three, 
expecting to find a little comfort and strength, 
and found them sleeping. 

The picture of John at the Last Supper, 
leaning on Jesus' breast, shows him to us in 



IOO THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

the posture in which we think of him most. 
It is the place of confidence ; the bosom is 
only for those who have a right to closest 
intimacy. It is the place of love, near the 
heart. It is the place of safety, for he is in 
the clasp of the everlasting arms, and none 
can snatch him out of the impregnable shelter. 
It was the darkest night the world ever saw 
that John lay on the bosom of Jesus. That 
is the place of comfort for all sorrowing 
believers, and there is abundance of room for 
them all on that breast. John leaned on 
Jesus' breast, — weakness reposed on strength, 
helplessness on almighty help. We should 
learn to lean, to lean our whole weight, on 
Christ. That is the privilege of Christian 
faith. 

There was one occasion when John seems 
to Tiave broken away from his usual humility. 
He joined with his brother in a request for 
the highest places in the new kingdom. This 
is only one of the evidences of John's human- 
ness, — that he was of like passions with the 
rest of us. Jesus treated the brothers with 



JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. IOI 

gentle pity — " Ye know not what ye ask." 
Then he explained to them that the highest 
places must be reached through toil and sor- 
row, through the paths of service and suffering. 
Later in life John knew what the Master's 
words meant. He found his place nearest 
to Christ, but it was not on the steps of an 
earthly throne ; it was a nearness of love, and 
the steps to it were humility, self-forgetful- 
ness, and ministry. 

It must have given immeasurable comfort 
to Jesus to have John stay so near to him dur- 
ing the last scenes. If he fled for a moment 
in the garden when all the apostles fled, he 
soon returned ; for he was close to his Master 
during his trial. Then, when he was on the 
cross, Jesus saw a group of loving friends- near 
by, watching with breaking hearts ; and among 
these was John. It lifted a heavy burden off 
the heart of Jesus to be able then to commit 
his mother to John, and to see him lead her 
away to his own home. It was a supreme ex- 
pression of friendship, — choosing John from 
among all his friends for the sacred duty of 
sheltering this blessedest of women. 



102 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

The story of this beautiful friendship of 
Jesus and John shows us what is possible in 
its own measure to every Christian disciple- 
ship. It is not possible for every Christian 
to be a St. John, but close friendship with 
Jesus is the privilege of every true believer ; 
and all who enter into such a friendship will 
be transformed into the likeness of their 
Friend. 



CHAPTER VII. 

JESUS AND PETER. 

"As the mighty poets take 

Grief and pain to build their song, 
Even so for every soul, 

Whatsoe'er its lot may be, — 
Building, as the heavens roll, 

Something large and strong and free, — 
Things that hurt and things that mar 

Shape the man for perfect praise; 
Shock and strain and ruin are 

Friendlier than the smiling days." 

Our first glimpse of Simon in the New 
Testament is as he was being introduced to 
Jesus. It was beside the Jordan. His brother 
had brought him ; and that moment a friend- 
ship began which not only was of infinite and 
eternal importance to Simon himself, but which 
has left incalculable blessing in the world. 

Jesus looked at him intently, with deep, 
penetrating gaze. He saw into his very soul. 

103 



104 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

He read his character; not only what he was 
then, but the possibilities of his life, — what he 
would become under the power of grace. He 
then gave him a new name. "When Jesus 
beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon : . . . 
thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by in- 
terpretation, a stone." 

In a gallery in Europe there hang, side by 
side, Rembrandt's first picture, a simple sketch, 
imperfect and faulty, and his great master- 
piece, which all men admire. So in the two 
names, Simon and Peter, we have, first the 
rude fisherman who came to Jesus that day, 
the man as he was before Jesus began his 
work on him ; and second, the man as he be- 
came during the years when the friendship 
of Jesus had warmed his heart and enriched 
his life ; when the teaching of Jesus had given 
him wisdom and kindled holy aspirations in his 
soul; and when the experiences of struggle 
and failure, of penitence and forgiveness, of 
sorrow and joy, had wrought their transfor- 
mations in him. 

"Thou art Simon. ,, That was his name 



JESUS AND PETER. I05 

then. "Thou shalt be called Cephas." That 
was what he should become. It was common 
in the East to give a new name to denote a 
change of character, or to indicate a man's 
position among men. Abram's name was 
changed to Abraham — " Father of a multi- 
tude" — when the promise was sealed to him. 
Jacob's name, which meant supplanter, one 
who lived by deceit, was changed to Israel, 
a prince with God, after that night when the 
old nature was maimed and defeated while he 
wrestled with God, and overcame by clinging 
in faith and trust. So Simon received a new 
name when he came to Jesus, and began his 
friendship with him. "Thou shalt be called 
Cephas." 

This did not mean that Simon's character 
was changed instantly into the quality which 
the new name indicated. It meant that Jesus 
saw in him the possibilities of firmness, strength, 
and stability, of which a stone is the emblem. 
It meant that this should be his character 
by and by, when the work of grace in him 
was finished. The new name was a prophecy 



106 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

of the man that was to be, the man that 
Jesus would make of him. Now he was only 
Simon — rash, impulsive, self-confident, vain, 
and therefore weak and unstable. 

Some of the processes in this making of a 
man, this transformation of Simon into Ce- 
phas, we may note as we read the story. 
There were three years between the begin- 
ning of the friendship of Jesus and Simon 
and the time when the man was ready for his 
work. The process was not easy. Simon 
had many hard lessons to learn. Self-confi- 
dence had to be changed into humility. Im- 
petuosity had to be chastened and disciplined 
into quiet self-control. Presumption had to be 
awed and softened into reverence. Thought- 
fulness had to grow out of heedlessness. Rash- 
ness had to be subdued into prudence, and 
weakness had to be tempered into calm 
strength. All this moral history was folded 
up in the words, "Thou shalt be called Ce- 
phas — a stone." 

The meeting by the Jordan was the begin- 
ning. A new friendship coming into a life 



JESUS AND PETER. 107 

may color all its future, may change its destiny. 
We never know what may come of any chance 
meeting. But the beginning of a friendship 
with Jesus has infinite possibilities of good. 
The giving of the new name must have put a 
new thought of life's meaning into Simon's 
heart. It must have set a new vision in his 
soul, and kindled new aspirations within his 
breast. Life must have meant more to him 
from that hour. He had glimpses of possi- 
bilities he had never dreamed of before. It 
is always so when Jesus truly comes into any 
one's life. A new conception of character 
dawns on the soul, a new ideal, a revelation 
which changes all thoughts of living. The 
friendship of Jesus is most inspiring. 

Some months passed, and then came a for- 
mal call which drew Simon into close and 
permanent relations with Jesus. It was on 
the Sea of Galilee. The men were fishing. 
There had been a night of unsuccessful toil. 
In the morning Jesus used Simon's boat for 
a pulpit, speaking from its deck to the throngs 
on the shore. He then bade the men push 



108 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

out into deep water and let down their net. 
Simon said it was not worth while — still 
he would do the Master's bidding. The re- 
sult was an immense haul of fishes. 

The effect of the miracle on Simon's mind 
was overwhelming. Instantly he felt that he 
was in the presence of divine revealing, and a 
sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness 
oppressed him. " Depart from me; for I am a 
sinful man, O Lord," he cried. Jesus quieted 
his terror with his comforting "Fear not." 
Then he said to him, "From henceforth thou 
shalt catch men." This was another self -reveal- 
ing. Simon's work as a fisherman was ended. 
He forsook all, and followed Jesus, becoming a 
disciple in the full sense. His friendship with 
Jesus was deepening. He gave up everything 
he had, going with Jesus into poverty, home- 
lessness, and — he knew not what. 

Living in the personal household of Jesus, 
Simon saw his Master's life in all its manifold 
phases, hearing the words he spoke whether 
in public on in private conversation, and wit- 
nessing every revealing of his character, dispo- 



JESUS AND PETER. IO9 

sition, and spirit. It is impossible to estimate 
the influence of all this on the life of Simon. 
He was continually seeing new things in Jesus, 
hearing new words from his lips, learning new 
lessons from his life. One cannot live in daily 
companionship with any good man without be- 
ing deeply influenced by the association. To 
live with Jesus in intimate relations of friend- 
ship was a holy privilege, and its effect on 
Simon's character cannot be estimated. 

An event which must have had a great in- 
fluence on Simon was his call to be an apostle. 
Not only was he one of the Twelve, but his 
name came first — it is always given first. He 
was the most honored of all, was to be their 
leader, occupying the first place among them. 
A true-hearted man is not elated or puffed up 
by such honoring as this. It humbles him, 
rather, because the distinction brings with it a 
sense of responsibility. It awes a good man 
to become conscious that God is intrusting 
him with place and duty in the world, and 
is using him to be a blessing to others. He 
must walk worthy of his high calling. A new 



I IO THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

sanctity invests him — the Lord has set him 
apart for holy service. 

Another event which had a marked influence 
on Simon was his recognition of the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus. Just how this great truth 
dawned upon his consciousness we do not 
know, but there came a time when the con- 
viction was so strong in him that he could not 
but give expression to it. It was in the neigh- 
borhood of Caesarea Philippi. Jesus had led 
the Twelve apart into a secluded place for 
prayer. There he asked them two solemn 
questions. He asked them first what the peo- 
ple were saying about him — who they thought 
he was. The answer showed that he was not 
understood by them; there were different opin- 
ions about him, none of them correct. Then 
he asked the Twelve who they thought he was. 
Simon answered, "The Christ, the Son of the 
living God." The confession was wonderfully 
comprehensive. It declared that Jesus was 
the Messiah, and that he was a divine being — 
the Son of the living God. 

It was a great moment in Simon's life when 



JESUS ATD PETER. Ill 

he uttered this wonderful confession. Jesus 
replied with a beatitude for Simon, and then 
spoke another prophetic word: "Thou art 
Peter," using now the new name which was 
beginning to be fitting, as the new man that 
was to be was growing out of the old man 
that was being left behind. "Thou art Peter, 
and upon this rock I will build my church." 
It was a further unveiling of Simon's future. 
It was in effect an unfolding or expansion of 
what he had said when Simon first stood before 
him. "Thou shalt be called Cephas." As a 
confessor of Christ, representing all the apos- 
tles, Peter was thus honored by his Lord. 

But the Messianic lesson was yet only partly 
learned. Simon believed that Jesus was the 
Messiah, but his conception of the Messiah 
was still only an earthly one. So we read that 
from that time Jesus began to teach the apos- 
tles the truth about his mission, — that he must 
suffer many things, and be killed. Then it 
was that Simon made his grave mistake in 
seeking to hold his Master back from the cross. 
" Be it far from thee, Lord : this shall never 



112 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

be unto thee," he said with great vehemence. 
Quickly came the stern reply, " Get thee be- 
hind me, Satan : thou art a stumbling-block 
unto me." Simon had to learn a new lesson. 
He did not get it fully learned until after 
Jesus had risen again, and the Holy Spirit had 
come, — that the measure of rank in' spiritual 
life is the measure of self-forgetting service. 

We get a serious lesson here in love and 
friendship. It is possible for us to become 
Satan even to those we love the best. We 
do this when we try to dissuade them from 
hard toil, costly service, or perilous missions 
to which God is calling them. We need to 
exercise the most diligent care, and to keep 
firm restraint upon our own affections, lest in 
our desire to make the way easier for our 
friends we tempt them to turn from the path 
which God has chosen for their feet. 

Thus lesson after lesson did Simon have 
to learn, each one leading to a deeper humility. 
"Less of self and more of thee — none of self 
and all of thee." Thus we reach the last night 
with its sad fall. The denial of Peter was a 



JESUS AND PETER. 113 

terrible disappointment. We would have said 
it was impossible, as Peter himself said. He 
was brave as a lion. He loved Jesus deeply 
and truly. He had received the name of the 
rock. For three years he had been under the 
teaching of Jesus, and he had been received 
into special honor and favor among the apos- 
tles. He had been faithfully forewarned of 
his danger, and we say, " Forewarned is fore- 
armed. " Yet in spite of all, this bravest, most 
favored disciple, this man of rock, fell most 
ignominiously, at a time, too, when friendship 
to his Master ought to have made him truest 
and most loyal. 

It was the loving gentleness of Jesus that 
saved him. What intense pain there must 
have been in the heart of the Master when, 
after hearing Peter's denial, he turned and 
looked at Peter ! 

"I think the look of Christ might seem to say, — 
' Thou Peter ! art thou then a common stone 
Which I at last must break my heart upon, 
For all God's charge to his high angels may 
Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday 



114 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run 
Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun? 
And do thy kisses like the rest betray? 
The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest 
A late contrition, but no bootless fear! 
For when thy final need is dreariest, 
Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here. 
My voice, to God and angels, shall attest, 
"Because I know this man, let him be clear." ' " 

It was after this look of wondrous love that 
Peter went out and wept bitterly. At last 
he remembered. It seemed too late, but it 
was not too late. The heart of Jesus was not 
closed against him, and he rose from his fall 
a new man. 

What place had the denial in the story of 
the training of Peter? It had a very impor- 
tant place. Up to that last night, there was 
still a grave blemish in Simon's character. 
His self-confidence was an element of weak- 
ness. Perhaps there was no other way in 
which this fault could be cured but by allow- 
ing him to fall. We know at least that, in 
the bitter experience of denial, with its solemn 
repenting, Peter lost his weakness. He came 



JESUS AND PETER. 1 1 5 

from his penitence a new man. At last he 
was disinthralled. He had learned the lesson 
of humility. It was never again possible for 
him to deny his Lord. A little later, after a 
heart-searching question thrice repeated, he 
was restored and recommissioned — " Feed my 
lambs; feed my sheep." 

So the work was completed ; the vision of 
the new man had been realized. Simon had 
become Cephas. It had been a long and costly 
process, but neither too long nor too costly. 
While the marble was wasting, the image was 
growing. 

You say it was a great price that Simon 
had to pay to be fashioned into Peter. You 
ask whether it was worth while, whether it 
would not have been quite as well for him if 
he had remained the plain, obscure fisherman 
he was when Jesus first found him. Then he 
would have been only a fisherman, and after 
living among his neighbors for his allotted 
years, he would have had a quiet funeral one 
day, and would have been laid to rest beside 
the sea. As it was, he had a life of poverty 



Il6 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

and toil and hard service. It took a great 
deal of severe discipline to make out of him 
the strong, firm man of rock that Jesus set 
out to produce in him. But who will say to- 
day that it was not worth while ? The splen- 
did Christian manhood of Peter has been now 
for nineteen centuries before the eyes of the 
world as a type of character which Christian 
men should emulate — a vision of life whose 
influence has touched millions with its inspi- 
ration. The price which had to be paid to 
attain this nobleness of character and this 
vastness of holy influence was not too great. 
But how about ourselves ? It may be quite 
as hard for some of us to be made into the 
image of beauty and strength which the Mas- 
ter has set for us. It may require that we 
shall pass through experiences of loss, trial, 
temptation, and sorrow. Life's great lessons 
are very long, and cannot be learned in a day, 
nor can they be learned easily. But life, at 
whatever cost, is worth while. It is worth 
while for the gold to pass through the fire to 
be made pure and clean. It is worth while 



JESUS AND PETER. 117 

for the gem to endure the hard processes 
necessary to prepare it for shining in its daz- 
zling splendor. It is worth while for a life 
to submit to whatever of severe discipline 
may be required to bring out in it the like- 
ness of the Master, and to fit it for noble 
doing and serving. Poets are said to learn 
in suffering what they teach in song. If only 
one line of noble, inspiring, uplifting song is 
sung into the world's air, and started on a 
world-wide mission of blessing, no price paid 
for the privilege is too much to pay. David 
had to suffer a great deal to be able to write 
the Twenty-Third Psalm, but he does not now 
think that psalm cost him too much. William 
Canton writes : — 

"A man lived fifty years — joy dashed with tears; 

Loved, toiled; had wife and child, and lost them; died; 
And left of all his long life's work one little song. 
That lasted — naught beside. 

Like the monk Felix's bird, that song was heard; 

Doubt prayed, Faith soared, Death smiled itself to sleep; 
That song saved souls. You say the man paid stiffly? 
Nay. 

God paid — and thought it cheap." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

JESUS AND THOMAS. 

I have a life in Christ to live, 
I have a death in Christ to die ; 

And must I wait till science give 
All doubts a full reply? 

Nay, rather while the sea of doubt 
Is raging wildly round about, 
Questioning of life and death and sin, 
Let me but creep within 
Thy fold, O Christ ! and at thy feet 
Take but the lowest seat. 

Principal Shairp. 

There is no record of the beginning of the 
friendship of Jesus and Thomas. We do not 
know when Thomas became a disciple, nor 
what first drew him to Jesus. Did a friend 
bring him ? Did he learn of the new rabbi 
through the fame of him that went everywhere, 
and then come to him without solicitation ? 
Did he hear him speak one day, and find him- 
self drawn to him by the power of his gracious 

118 



JESUS AND THOMAS. Iig 

words ? Or did Jesus seek him out in his 
home or at his work, and call him to be a 
follower ? 

We do not know. The manner of his com- 
ing is veiled in obscurity. The first mention 
of his name is in the list of the Twelve. As 
the apostles were chosen from the much larger 
company of those who were already disciples, 
Thomas must have been a follower of Jesus 
before he was an apostle. He and Jesus had 
been friends for some time, and there is evi- 
dence that the friendship was a very close 
and tender one. Even in the scant material 
available for the making up of the story, we 
find evidence in Thomas of strong loyalty and 
unwavering devotion, and in Jesus of marvel- 
lous patience and gentleness toward his disciple. 

We have in the New Testament many won- 
derfully lifelike portraits. Occurring again and 
again, they are always easily recognizable. 
In every mention of Peter, for example, the 
man is indubitably the same. He is always 
active, speaking or acting ; not always wisely, 
but in every case characteristically, — impetu- 



120 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

ous, self-confident, rash, yet ever warm-hearted. 
We would know him unmistakably in every 
incident in which he appears, even if his name 
were not given. John, too, whenever we see 
him, is always the same, — reverent, quiet, af- 
fectionate, trustful, the disciple of love. An- 
drew appears only a few times, but in each 
of these cases he is engaged in the same way, 
— bringing some one to Jesus. Mary of 
Bethany comes into the story on only three 
occasions ; but always we see her in the same 
attitude, — at Jesus' feet, — while Martha is ever 
active in her serving. 

The character of Thomas also is sketched in 
a very striking way. There are but three in- 
cidents in which this apostle appears ; but in 
all of these the portrait is the same, and is 
so clear that even Peter's character is scarcely 
better known than that of Thomas. He al- 
ways looks at the dark side. We think of him 
as the doubter ; but his doubt is not of the 
flippant kind which reveals lack of reverence, 
ofttimes ignorance and lack of earnest thought ; 
it is rather a constitutional tendency to ques- 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 121 

tion, and to wait for proof which would satisfy 
the senses, than a disposition to deny the facts 
of Christianity. Thomas was ready to believe, 
glad to believe, when the proof was sufficient 
to convince him. Then all the while he was 
ardently a true and devoted friend of Jesus, 
attached to him, and ready to follow him even 
to death. 

The first incident in which Thomas appears 
is in connection with the death of Lazarus. 
Jesus had now gone beyond the Jordan with 
his disciples. The Jews had sought to kill 
him ; and he escaped from their hands, and 
went away for safety. When news of the sick- 
ness of Lazarus came, Jesus waited two days, 
and then said to his disciples, " Let us go into 
Judea again/' The disciples reminded him of 
the hatred of the Jews, and of their recent at- 
tempts to kill him. They thought that he 
ought not to venture back again into the dan- 
ger, even for the sake of carrying comfort 
to the sorrowing Bethany household. Jesus 
answered with a little parable about one's se- 
curity while walking during the day. The 



122 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

meaning of the parable was that he had not 
yet reached the end of his day, and therefore 
could safely continue the work which had been 
given him to do. Every man doing God's 
will is immortal till the work is done. Jesus 
then announced to his disciples that Lazarus 
was dead, and that he was going to waken him. 
It is at this point that Thomas appears. He 
said to his fellow-disciples, " Let us also go, 
that we may die with him." He looked only 
at the dark side. He took it for granted that 
if Jesus returned to Judea he would be killed. 
He forgot for the time the divine power of 
Jesus, and the divine protection which sheltered 
him while he was doing the Father's will. He 
failed to understand the words Jesus had just 
spoken about his security until the hours of 
his day were finished. He remembered only 
the bitterness which the Jews had shown to- 
ward Jesus, and their determination to destroy 
his life. He had no hope that if Jesus re- 
turned they would not carry out their wicked 
purpose. There was no blue in the sky for 
him. He saw only darkness. 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 1 23 

Thomas represents a class of good people 
who are found in every community. They 
see only the sad side of life. No stars shine 
through their cypress-trees. In the time of 
danger they forget that there are divine ref- 
uges into which they may flee and be safe. 
They know the promises, and often quote them 
to others ; but when trouble comes upon them, 
all these words of God fade out of their minds. 
In sorrow they fail to receive any true and 
substantial comfort from the Scriptures Hope 
dies in their hearts when the shadows gather 
about them. They yield to discouragement, 
and the darkness blots out every star in their 
sky. Whatever the trouble may be that comes 
into their life, they see the trouble only, and 
fail to perceive the bright light in the cloud. 

This habit of mind adds much to life's hard- 
ness. Every burden is heavier because of the 
sad heart that beats under it. Every pain is 
keener because of the dispiriting which it 
brings with it. Every sorrow is made darker 
by the hopelessness with which it is endured. 
Every care is magnified, and the sweetness of 



124 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

every pleasure is lessened, by this pessimistic 
tendency. The beauty of the world loses half 
its charm in the eyes which see all things in 
the hue of despondent feeling. Slightest fears 
become terrors, and smallest trials grow into 
great misfortunes. Our heart makes our world 
for us ; and if the heart be without hope and 
cheer, the world is always dark. We find in 
life just what we have the capacity to find. 
One who is color-blind sees no loveliness in 
nature. One who has no music in his soul 
hears no harmonies anywhere. When fear 
sits regnant on the throne, life is full of 
alarms. 

On the other hand, if the heart be full of 
hope, every joy is doubled, and half of every 
trouble vanishes. There are sorrows, but they 
are comforted. There are bitter cups, but 
the bitterness is sweetened. There are heavy 
burdens, but the songful spirit lightens them. 
There are dangers, but cheerful courage robs 
them of terror. All the world is brighter 
when the light of hope shines within. 

But we have read only half the story of the 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 1 25 

fear of Thomas. He saw only danger in the 
Master's return to Judea. "The Jews will 
kill him ; he will go back to certain death," 
he said. But Thomas would not forsake Jesus, 
though he was going straight to martyrdom. 
"Let us also go, that we may die with him." 
Thus, mingled with his fear, was a noble and 
heroic love for Jesus. The hopelessness of 
Thomas as he thought of Jesus going to 
Bethany makes his devotion and his cleaving 
to him all the braver and nobler. He was 
sure it was a walk to death, but he faltered 
not in his loyalty. 

This is a noble spirit in Thomas, which we 
would do well to emulate. It is the true 
soldier spirit. Its devotion to Christ is abso- 
lute, and its following unconditional. It has 
only one motive, — love ; and one rule, — obe- 
dience. It is not influenced by any question 
of consequences ; but though it be to certain 
death, it hesitates not. This is the kind of 
discipleship which the Master demands. He 
who loves father or mother more than him 
is not worthy of him. He who hates not his 



126 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

own life cannot be his disciple. A follower 
of Jesus must be ready and willing to follow 
him to his cross. Thomas proved his friend- 
ship for his Master by a noble heroism. It 
is the highest test of courage to go forward 
unfalteringly in the way of duty when one 
sees only personal loss and sacrifice as the 
result. The soldier who trembles, and whose 
face whitens from constitutional physical fear, 
and who yet marches steadily into the battle, 
is braver far than the soldier who without a 
tremor presses into the engagement. 

The second time at which Thomas appears 
is in the upper room, after the Holy Supper 
had been eaten. Jesus had spoken of the 
Father's house, and had said that he was going 
away to prepare a place for his disciples, and 
that then he would come again to receive them 
unto himself. Thomas could not understand 
the Master's meaning, and said, "Lord, we 
know not whither thou goest ; and how can 
we know the way?" He would not say he 
believed until he saw for himself. That is 
all that his question in the upper room meant 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 1 27 

— he wished the Master to make the great 
teaching a little plainer. It were well if more 
Christians insisted on finding the ground of 
their faith, the reasons why they are Chris- 
tians. Their faith would then be stronger, 
and less easily shaken. When trouble comes, 
or any testing, it would continue firm and un- 
moved, because it rests on the rock of divine 
truth. 

The last incident in the story of Thomas 
is after the resurrection. The first evening 
the apostles met in the upper room to talk 
over the strange things which had occurred 
that day. For some reason Thomas was not 
at this meeting. We may infer that his mel- 
ancholy temperament led him to absent him- 
self. He had loved Jesus deeply, and his 
sorrow was very great. There had been ru- 
mors all day of Christ's resurrection, but 
Thomas put no confidence in these. Perhaps 
his despondent disposition made him unsocial, 
and kept him from meeting with the other 
apostles, even to weep with them. 

That evening Jesus entered through the 



128 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

closed doors, and stood in the midst of the 
disciples, and greeted them as he had done so 
often before, " Peace be unto you ! " They 
told Thomas afterwards that they had seen 
the Lord. But he refused to believe them ; 
that is, he doubted the reality of what they 
thought they had seen. He said that they 
had been deceived ; and he asserted that he 
must not only see for himself, but must have 
the opportunity of subjecting the evidence to 
the severest test. He must see the print 
of the nails, and must also be permitted to 
put his finger into the place. 

It is instructive to think of what this doubt- 
ing disposition of Thomas cost him. First, it 
kept him from the meeting of the disciples 
that evening, when all the others came to- 
gether. He shut himself up with his gloom 
and sadness. His grief was hopeless, and he 
would not seek comfort. The consequence 
was, that when Jesus entered the room, and 
showed himself to his friends, Thomas missed 
the revealing which gave them such unspeak- 
able gladness. From that hour their sorrow 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 1 29 

was changed to joy ; but for the whole of 
another week Thomas remained in the dark- 
ness in which the crucifixion had infolded 
him. 

Doubt is always costly. It shuts out heav- 
enly comfort. There are many Christian peo- 
ple who, especially in the first shock of sorrow, 
have an experience similar to that of Thomas. 
They shut themselves up with their grief, and 
refuse to accept the comfort of the gospel of 
Christ. They turn away their ears from the 
voices of love which speak to them out of the 
Bible, and will not receive the divine consola- 
tions. The light shines all about them ; but 
they close doors and windows, and keep it from 
entering the darkened chamber where they sit. 
The music of peace floats on the air in sweet, 
entrancing strains, but no gentle note finds 
its way to their hearts. 

Too many Christian mourners fail to find 
comfort in their sorrow. They believe the 
great truths of Christianity, that Jesus died 
for them and rose again ; but their faith fails 
them for the time in the hour of sorest dis- 



I30 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

tress. Meanwhile they walk in darkness as 
Thomas did. On the other hand, those who ac- 
cept, and let into their hearts the great truths 
of Christ's resurrection and the immortal life 
in Christ, feel the pain of parting no less sorely, 
but they find abundant consolation in the hope 
of eternal life for those whom they have lost 
for a time. 

We have an illustration of the deep, tender, 
patient, and wise friendship of Jesus for Thomas 
in the way he treated this doubt of his apostle. 
He did not say that if Thomas could not be- 
lieve the witness of the apostles to his resur- 
rection he must remain in the darkness which 
his unbelief had made for him. He treated 
his doubt with exceeding gentleness, as a 
skilful physician would deal with a dangerous 
wound. He was in no haste. A full week 
passed before he did anything. During those 
days the sad heart had time to react, to re- 
cover something of its self-poise. Thomas still 
persisted in his refusal to believe, but when 
a week had gone he found his way with the 
others to their meeting. Perhaps their belief 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 131 

in the Lord's resurrection made such a change 
in them, so brightened and transformed them, 
that Thomas grew less positive in his unbe- 
lief as he saw them day after day. At least 
he was ready now to be convinced. He wanted 
to believe. 

That night Jesus came again into the room, 
the doors being shut, and standing in the midst 
of his friends, breathed again upon them his 
benediction of peace. Then he turned to 
Thomas ; and holding out his hands, with the 
print of the nails in them, he asked him to 
put the evidences of his resurrection to the 
very tests he had said he must make before 
he could believe. Now Thomas was convinced. 
He did not make the tests he had insisted 
that he must make. There was no need for 
it. To look into the face of Jesus, to hear his 
voice, and to see the prints of the nails in his 
hands, was evidence enough even for Thomas. 
All his doubts were swept away. Falling at 
the Master's feet, he exclaimed, " My Lord and 
my God ! " 

Thus the gentleness of Jesus in dealing with 



132 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

his doubts saved Thomas from being an un- 
believer. It is a great thing to have a wise 
and faithful friend when one is passing through 
an experience of doubt. Many persons are 
only confirmed in their scepticism by the well- 
meant but unwise efforts that are made to 
convince them of the truth concerning which 
they doubt. It is not argument that they 
need, but the patience of love, which waits in 
silence till the right time comes for words, 
and which then speaks but little. Thomas was 
convinced, not by words, but by seeing the 
proofs of Christ's love in the prints of the 
nails. 

We may be glad now that Thomas was hard 
to convince of the truth of Christ's resurrec- 
tion. It makes the proofs more indubitable 
to us that one even of the apostles refused 
at first to believe, and yet at length was led 
into triumphant faith. If all the apostles had 
believed easily, there would have been no com- 
fort in the gospel for those who find it hard 
to believe, and yet who sincerely want to be- 
lieve. The fact that one doubted, and even 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 1 33 

refused to accept the witness of his fellow- 
apostles, and then at length was led into clear, 
strong faith, forever teaches that doubt is not 
hopeless. Ofttimes it may be but a process 
in the development of faith. 

The story of Thomas shows, too, that there 
may be honest doubt. While he doubted, he 
yet loved ; perhaps no other one of the apos- 
tles loved Jesus more than did Thomas. He 
never made any such bold confession as Peter 
did, but neither did he ever deny Christ. 
Thomas has been a comfort to many because 
he has shown them that they can be true 
Christians, true lovers of Christ, and yet not 
be able to boast of their assurance of faith. 

No doubt faith is better than questioning, 
but there may be honest questioning which yet 
is intensely loyal to Christ. Questioning, too, 
which is eager to find the truth and rest on 
the rock, may be better than easy believing, 
that takes no pains to know the reason of 
the hope it cherishes, and lightly recites the 
noble articles of a creed it has never seriously 
studied. Tennyson, in " In Memoriam," tells 



134 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

the story of a faith that grew strong through 
its doubting. 

You say, but with no touch of scorn, 

Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies, 

You tell me, doubt is devil-born. 

I know not: one indeed I knew 

In many a subtle question versed, 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 

But ever strove to make it true: 

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 

At last he beat his music out. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

He fought his doubts and gathered strength; 

He would not make his judgment blind; 

He faced the spectres of the mind 
And laid them: thus he came at length 

To find a stronger faith his own; 

And power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 

And dwells not in the light alone, 

But in the darkness and the cloud, 
As over Sinai's peaks of old, ^ 
While Israel made their gods of gold, 

Although the trumpet blew so loud. 



JESUS AND THOMAS. 1 35 

That which saved Thomas was his deep, 
strong friendship for Christ. "The charac- 
teristic of Thomas/' says Ian Maclaren, "is 
not that he doubted, — that were an easy pass- 
port to religion, — but that he doubted and 
loved. His doubt was the measure of his 
love; his doubt was swallowed up in love." 
If friendship for Christ be loyal and true, we 
need not look upon questioning as disloyalty ; 
it may be but love finding the way up the 
rugged mountain-side to the sunlit summit of 
a glorious faith. There is a scepticism whose 
face is toward wintriness and death ; but there 
is a doubt which is looking toward the sun and 
toward all blessedness. 

Thomas teaches us that one may look on the 
dark side and yet be a Christian, an ardent 
lover of Jesus, ready to die for him. But we 
must admit that this is not the best way to 
live. No one would say that Thomas was the 
ideal among the apostles, that his character 
was the most beautiful, his life the noblest and 
the best. Faifh is better than doubt, and con- 
fidence better than questioning. It is better 



136 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

to be a sunny Christian, rejoicing, songful, 
happy, than a sad, gloomy, despondent Chris- 
tian. It makes one's own life sweeter and 
more beautiful. Then it makes others happier. 
A gloomy Christian casts dark shadows wher- 
ever he goes ; a sunny Christian is a benedic- 
tion to every life he touches 



CHAPTER IX. 

JESUS 9 UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 

" Friend, my feet bleed. 

Open thy door to me and comfort me." 

I will not open; trouble me no more. 

Go on thy way footsore; 

I will not rise and open unto thee. 

"Then it is nothing to thee? Open, see 

Who stands to plead with thee. 

Open, lest I should pass thee by, and thou 

One day entreat my face 

And howl for grace, 

And I be deaf as thou art now. 

Open to me." 

Christina G. Rossetti. 

There is a great deal of unrequited love in 
this world. There are hearts that love with 
all the strength of purest and holiest affection, 
whose love seems to meet no requital. There 
is much unrequited mother-love and father- 
love. Parents live for their children. In help- 
less infancy they begin to pour out their affec- 

i37 



138 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

tion on them. They toil for them, suffer for 
them, deny themselves to provide comforts 
for them, bear their burdens, watch beside 
them when they are sick, pray for them, and 
teach them. Parent-love is likest God's love 
of all earthly affections. It is one of the 
things in humanity which at its best seems 
to have come from the Fall almost unimpaired. 
Much parent-love is worthily honored and fit- 
tingly requited. Few things in this world 
are more beautiful than the devotion of chil- 
dren to parents which one sees in some homes. 
But not always is there such return. Too 
often is this almost divine love unrequited. 

Much philanthropic love also is unrequited. 
There are men who spend all their life in do- 
ing good, and then meet no return. Men have 
served their country with loyalty and disin- 
terestedness, and have received no reward — 
perhaps have been left to suffering, and have 
died in poverty, neglected and forgotten ; too 
often have lain in prison, or been put to death, 
or exiled by the country which was indebted 
to their patriotism and loyal service for much 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 1 39 

of its glory and greatness. Many hearts break 
because of men's ingratitude. 

Jesus was the world's greatest benefactor. 
No other man ever loved the race, or could 
have loved it, as he did. He was the divine 
messenger who came to save the world. His 
whole life was a revealing of love. It was 
the love of God too, — a love of infinite depth 
and strength and tenderness, and not any 
merely human love, however rich and faithful 
it might be, that was manifested in Jesus 
Christ. Yet much of his wonderful love was 
unrequited. " He was in the world, and the 
world was made by him, and the world knew 
him not. He came unto his own, and his 
own received him not." A few individuals 
recognized him and accepted his love ; but the 
great masses of the people paid him no heed, 
saw no beauty in him, rejected the blessings 
he bore and proffered to all, and let his love 
waste itself in unavailing yearnings and be- 
seechings. Then one cruel day they nailed 
him on a cross, thinking to quench the affec- 
tion of his mighty heart. 



14O THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

There are many illustrations of the unre- 
quiting of the holy friendship of Jesus. The 
treatment he received at Nazareth was one 
instance. He had been brought up . among 
the people. They had seen his beautiful life 
during the thirty years he had lived in the 
village. They had known him as a child when 
he played in their streets. They had known 
him as a youth and young man in his noble 
strength. They had known him as a carpen- 
ter when day after day he wrought among 
them in humble toil. 

It is interesting to think of the sinless life 
of Jesus all these years. There was no halo 
about his head but the shining of manly char- 
acter. There were no miracles wrought by 
his hands but the miracles of duty, faithful 
service, and gentle kindness. Yet we cannot 
doubt that his life in Nazareth was one of 
rare grace and beauty, marked by perfect un- 
selfishness and great helpfulness. 

By and by^ he went away from Nazareth to 
begin his public ministry as the Messiah. 
From that time the people saw him no more. 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 141 

The carpenter shop was closed, and the tools 
lay unused on the bench. The familiar form 
appeared no more on the streets. A year or 
more passed, and one day he came back to 
visit his old neighbors. He stayed a little 
while, and on the Sabbath was at the village 
church as had been his wont when his home 
was at Nazareth. When the opportunity was 
given him, he unrolled the Book of Isaiah, and 
read the passage which tells of the anointing 
of the Messiah, and gives the wonderful out- 
line of his ministry. When he had finished 
the reading, he told the people that this proph- 
ecy was now fulfilled in their ears. That 
is, he said that he was the Messiah whose 
anointing and work the prophet had foretold. 
For a time the people listened spellbound to 
his gracious words, and then they began to 
grow angry, that he whom they knew as the 
carpenter of their village should make such 
an astounding claim. They rose up in wrath, 
thrust him out of the synagogue, and would 
have hurled him over the precipice had he 
not eluded them and gone on his way. 



142 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

He had come to them in love, bearing rich 
blessings ; but they drove him away with the 
blessings. He had come to heal their sick, 
to cure their blind and lame, to cleanse their 
lepers, to comfort their sorrowing ones; but 
he had to go away and leave these works of 
mercy unwrought, while the sufferers contin- 
ued to bear their burdens. His friendship for 
his old neighbors was unrequited. 

Another instance of unrequited friendship in 
the life of Jesus was in the case of the rich 
young man who came to him. He had many 
excellent traits of character, and was also an 
earnest seeker after the truth. We are dis- 
tinctly told that Jesus loved him. Thus he 
belongs with Martha and Mary and Lazarus, 
of whom the same was said. But here, again, 
the love was unrequited. The young man was 
deeply interested in Jesus, and wanted to go 
with him ; but he could not pay the price, and 
turned and went away. 

It is interesting to think what might have 
been the result if he had chosen Christ and 
gone with him. He might have occupied an 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 1 43 

important place in the early church, and his 
name might have lived through all future gen- 
erations. But he loved his money too much 
to give it up for Christ, and rejected the way 
of the cross marked out for him. He refused 
the friendship of Jesus, and thus threw away 
all that was best in life. In shutting love out 
of his heart, he shut himself out from love. 

Of all the examples of unrequited friendship 
in the story of Jesus, that of Judas is the sad- 
dest. We do not know the beginning of the 
story of his discipleship, when Judas first came 
to Jesus, or who brought him. But he must 
have been a follower some time before he was 
chosen to be an apostle. Jesus thought over 
the names of those who had left all to be with 
him. Then after a night of prayer he chose 
twelve of these to be his special messengers 
and witnesses. He loved them all, and took 
them into very close relations. 

Think what a privilege it was for these men 
to live with Jesus. They heard all his words. 
They saw every phase of his life. Some 
friends it is better not to know too intimately. 



144 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

They are not as good in private as they are 
in public. Their life does not bear too close 
inspection. We discover in them dispositions, 
habits, ways, tempers, feelings, motives, which 
dim the lustre we see in them at greater dis- 
tance. Intimacy weakens the friendship. But, 
on the other hand, there are those who, the 
more we see of their private life, the more 
we love them. Close association reveals love- 
liness of character, fineness of spirit, richness 
of heart, sweetness of disposition — habits, 
feelings, tempers, noble self-denials, which add 
to the attractiveness of the life and the charm 
of our friend's personality. We may be sure 
that intimacy with Jesus only made him ap- 
pear all the more winning and beautiful to 
his friends. Judas lived in the warmth of this 
wondrous love, under the influence of this 
gracious personality, month after month. He 
witnessed the pure and holy life of Jesus in 
all its manifold phases, heard his words, and 
saw his works. Doubtless, too, in his individ- 
ual relation with the Master, he received many 
marks of affection and personal friendship. 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 145 

A careful reading of the Gospels shows that 
Judas was frequently warned of the very sin 
which in the end wrought his ruin. Contin- 
ually Jesus spoke of the danger of covetous- 
ness. In the Sermon on the Mount he 
exhorted his disciples to lay up their treasure, 
not upon earth, but in heaven, and said that 
no one could serve God and mammon. It 
was just this that Judas was trying to do. In 
more than one parable the danger of riches 
was emphasized. Can we doubt that in all 
these reiterations and warnings on the one 
subject, Judas was in the Master's mind? He 
was trying in the faithfulness of loyal friend- 
ship to save him from the sin which was im- 
perilling his very life. 

But Judas resisted all the mighty love of 
Christ. It made no impression upon him ; 
he was unaffected by it. In his heart there 
grew on meanwhile, unchecked, unhindered, 
his terrible greed for money. First it made 
him a thief. The money given to Jesus by 
his friends to provide for his wants, or to use 
for the poor, Judas, who was the treasurer, 



146 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

began at length to purloin for himself. This 
was the first step. The next was the selling 
of his Master for thirty pieces of silver. This 
was a more fearful fruit of his nourished greed 
than the purloining was. It is bad enough 
to steal. It is a base form of stealing which 
robs a church treasury as Judas did. But to 
take money as the price of betraying a friend 
— could any sin be baser? Could any crime 
be blacker than that? To take money as the 
price of betraying a friend in whose confi- 
dence one has lived for years, at whose table 
one has eaten day after day, in the blessing 
of whose friendship one has rested for months 
and years — are there words black enough to 
paint the infamy of such a deed? 

All the participators in the crime of that 
Good Friday wear a peculiar brand of infamy 
as they are portrayed on the pages of history; 
but among them all, the most despicable, the 
one whose name bears the deepest infamy, 
is Judas, an apostle turned traitor, for a few 
miserable coins betraying his best friend into 
the hands of malignant foes. 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 1 47 

This is the outcome of the friendship of 
Jesus for Judas; this was the fruit of those 
years of affection, cherishing, patient teach- 
ing. Think what Judas might have been. He 
was chosen and called to be an apostle. There 
was no reason in the heart of Jesus why Judas 
might not have been true and worthy. Sin 
is not God's plan for any life. Treachery 
and infamy were not in God's purpose for 
Judas. Jesus would not have chosen him 
for one of the Twelve if it had not been pos- 
sible for him to be a good and true man. 
Judas fell because he had never altogether 
surrendered himself to Christ. He tried to 
serve God and mammon; but both could not 
stay in his heart, and instead of driving out 
mammon, mammon drove out Christ. 

This suggests to us what a battlefield the 
human heart sometimes is- — a Waterloo where 
destinies are settled. God or mammon — 
which ? That is the question every soul must 
answer. How goes the battle in your soul? 
Who is winning on your field — Christ or 
money? Christ or pleasure? Christ or sin? 



148 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Christ or self? Judas lost the battle; the 
Devil won. 

A picture in Brussels represents Judas wan- 
dering about the night after the betrayal. By 
chance he comes upon the workmen who have 
been preparing the cross for Jesus. A fire 
burning close by throws its weird light on the 
faces of the men who are now sleeping. The 
face of Judas is somewhat in the shade ; but 
one sees on it remorse and agony, as the trai- 
tor's eyes fall upon the cross and the tools 
which have been used in making it, — the cross 
to which his treason had doomed his friend. 
But though suffering in the torments of a 
guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his 
money-bag as he hurries on into the night. 
The picture tells the story of the fruit of 
Judas's sin, — the money-bag, with eighteen 
dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that 
soon to be cast away in the madness of despair. 

Unrequited friendship ! Yes ; and in shut- 
ting out that blessed friendship, Judas shut 
out hope. Longfellow puts into his mouth 
the despairing words : — 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 1 49 

" Lost, lost, forever lost ! I have betrayed 
The innocent blood . . . 

Too late ! too late ! I shall not see him more 
Among the living. That sweet, patient face 
Will nevermore rebuke me, nor those lips 
Repeat the words, * One of you shall betray me.' " 

The great lesson from all this is the peril of 
rejecting the friendship of Jesus Christ. In 
his friendship is the only way to salvation, 
the only way of obtaining eternal life. He 
calls men to come to him, to follow him, to 
be his friends ; and thus alone can they come 
unto God, and be received into his family. 

There is something appalling in the reveal- 
ing which this truth teaches, — the power each 
soul possesses of shutting out all the love of 
God, of resisting the infinite blessing of the 
friendship of Christ. It is possible for us to 
be near to Christ through all our life, with his 
grace flowing about us like an ocean, and yet 
to have a heart that remains unblessed by 
divine love. We may make God's love in vain, 
wasted, as sunshine is wasted that falls upon 
desert sands, so far as we are concerned. The 



150 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

love that we do not requite with love, that does 
not get into our heart to warm, soften, and 
enrich it, and to mellow and bless our life, is 
love poured out in vain. It is made in vain 
by our unbelief. We may make even the 
dying of Jesus for us in vain, — a waste of 
precious life, so far as we are concerned. It 
is in vain for us that Jesus died if we do not 
let his love into our heart. 

Ofttimes the unrequiting of human love 
makes the heart bitter. When holy friendship 
has been despised, rejected, and cast away, 
when one has loved, suffered, and sacrificed 
in vain, receiving only ingratitude and wrong 
in return for love's most sacred gifts freely 
lavished, the danger is that the heart may lose 
its sweetness, and grow cold, hard, and misan- 
thropic. But not thus was the heart of Jesus 
affected by the unrequiting of his love and 
friendship. One Judas in the life of most men 
would have ended the whole career of generous 
kindness, drying up the fountains of affection, 
thus robbing those who would come after of 
the wealth of tenderness which ought to have 



UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS. 151 

been theirs. But through all the unrequiting 
and resisting of its love, the heart of Jesus 
still remained gentle as a mother's, rich in its 
power to love, and sweet in its spirit. 

This is one of the great problems of true 
living, — how to keep the heart warm, gentle, 
compassionate, kind, full of affection's best 
and truest helpfulness, even amid life's hardest 
experiences. We cannot live and not at some 
time suffer wrong. We will meet injustice, 
however justly we ourselves may live. We 
will find a return of ingratitude many a time 
when we have done our best for others. Favors 
rendered are too easily forgotten by many 
people. There are few of us who do not 
remember helping others in time of great need 
and distress, only to lose their friendship in 
the end, perhaps, as a consequence of our 
serving them in their need. Sometimes the 
only return for costly kindness is cruel un- 
kindness. 

It is easy to allow such unrequiting, such ill 
treatment of love, to embitter the fountain of 
the heart's affection ; but this would be to 



152 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

miss the true end of living, which is to get 
good and not evil to ourselves from every ex- 
perience through which we pass. No ingrati- 
tude, injustice, or unworthiness in those to 
whom we try to do good should ever be allowed 
to turn love's sweetness into bitterness in us. 
Like fresh-water springs beside the sea, over 
which the brackish tide flows, but which when 
the bitter waters have receded are found sweet 
as ever, so should our hearts remain amid all 
experiences of love's unrequiting, ever sweet, 
thoughtful, unselfish, and generous. 



CHAPTER X. 

JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTEBS. 

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, 
Nor other thought her mind admits 
But, he was dead, and there he sits, 

And he that brought him back is there. 

Then one deep love doth supersede 
All other, when her ardent gaze 
Roves from the living brother's face, 

And rests upon the Life indeed. 

Tennyson. 

The story of Jesus and the Bethany home 
is intensely interesting. Every thoughtful 
Christian has a feeling of gratitude in his 
heart when he remembers how much that 
home added to the comfort of the Master by 
means of the hospitality, the shelter, and the 
love it gave to him. One of the legends of 
Brittany tells us that on the day of Christ's 
crucifixion, as he was on his way to his cross, 
a bird, pitying the weary sufferer bearing his 

i53 



154 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

heavy burden, flew down, and plucked away- 
one of the thorns that pierced his brow. As 
it did so, the blood spurted out after the 
thorn, and splashed the breast of the bird. 
Ever since that day the bird has had a splash 
of red on its bosom, whence it is called robin- 
redbreast. Certainly the love of the Bethany 
home drew from the breast of Jesus many a 
thorn, and blessed his heart with many a joy. 

We have three glimpses within the doors 
of this home when the loved guest was there. 
The first shows us the Master and his disci- 
ples one day entering the village. It was 
Martha who received him. Martha was the 
mistress of the house. "She had a sister 
called Mary," a younger sister. 

Then we have a picture as if some one had 
photographed the scene. We see Mary draw- 
ing up a low stool, and sitting down at the 
Master's feet to listen to his words. We see 
Martha hurrying about the house, busy pre- 
paring a meal for the visitors who had come in 
suddenly. This was a proper thing to do ; it 
was needful that hospitality be shown. There 



/ESC7S AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. I 55 

is a word in the record, however, which tells 
us that Martha was not altogether serene as 
she went about her work. " Martha was cum- 
bered about much serving/ ' A marginal read- 
ing gives, "was distracted. ,, 

Perhaps there are many modern Christian 
housekeepers who would be somewhat cum- 
bered, or distracted too, if thirteen hungry 
men dropped in suddenly some day, and they 
had to entertain them, preparing them a meal. 
Still, the lesson unmistakably is that Martha 
should not have been fretted ; that she should 
have kept sweet amid all the pressure of work 
that so burdened her. 

It was not quite right for her to show her 
impatience with Mary as she did. Coming 
into the room, flushed and excited, and seeing 
Mary sitting quietly and unconcernedly at the 
Rabbi's feet, drinking in his words, she ap- 
pealed to Jesus, " Lord, dost thou not care 
that my sister did leave me to serve alone ? 
bid her therefore that she help me." 

I am not sure that Martha was wrong or 
unreasonable in thinking that Mary should 



I56 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

have helped her. Jesus did not say she was 
wrong; he only reminded Martha that she 
ought not to let things fret and vex her. 
" Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and trou- 
bled about many things." It was not her 
serving that he reproved, but the fret that 
she allowed to creep into her heart; 

The lesson is, that however heavy our bur- 
dens may be, however hurried or pressed we 
may be, we should always keep the peace of 
Christ in our heart. This is one of the prob 
lems of Christian living, — not to live without 
cares, which is impossible, but to keep quiet 
and sweet in the midst of the most cumber- 
ing care. 

At the second mention of the Bethany home 
there is sore distress in it. A beloved one is 
very sick, sick unto death. Few homes are 
entire strangers to the experience of those 
days when the sufferer lay in the burning 
fever. Love ministered and prayed and waited. 
Jesus was far away, but word was sent to him. 
He came at length, but seemed to have come 
too late. "If thou hadst been here!" the 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. I $7 

sisters said, each separately, when they met 
the Master. But we see now the finished 
providence, not the mere fragment of it which 
the sisters saw ; and we know he came at the 
right time. He comforted the mourners, and 
then he blotted out the sorrow, bringing back 
joy to the home. 1 

The third picture of this home shows us a 
festal scene. A dinner was given in honor 
of Jesus. It was only a few days before his 
death. Here, again, the sisters appear, each 
true to her own character. Martha is serv- 
ing, as she always is ; and again Mary is at 
Jesus' feet. This time she is showing her 
wonderful love for the friend who has done 
so much for her. The ointment she pours 
upon him is an emblem of her heart's pure 
affection. 

Mary's act was very beautiful. Love was 
the motive. Without love no service, how- 
ever great or costly, is of any value in heav- 
en's sight. The world may applaud, but 
angels turn away with indifference when love 

1 For a fuller treatment of this incident, see Chapter XI. 



158 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

is lacking. " If I bestow all my goods to feed 
the poor . . . but have not love, it profiteth 
me nothing." But love makes the smallest 
deed radiant as angel ministry. We need not 
try doing things for Christ until we love him. 
It would be like putting rootless rods in a 
garden-bed, expecting them to grow into blos- 
soming plants. Love must be the root. It 
was easy for Mary to bring her alabaster 
box, for her heart was full of overmastering 
love. 

Service is the fruit of love. It is not all 
of its fruit. Character is part too. If we 
love Christ, we will have Christ's beauty in 
our soul. Mary grew wondrously gentle and 
lovely as Christ's words entered her heart. 
Friendship with Christ makes us like Christ. 
But there will be service too. Love is like 
light, it cannot be hid. It cannot be shut up 
in the heart. It will not be imprisoned and 
restrained. It will live and speak and act. 
Love in the heart of Jesus brought him from 
heaven down to earth to be the lost world's 
Redeemer. Love in his apostles took them 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. 1 59 

to the ends of the earth to tell the gospel 
story to the perishing. 

It is not enough to try to hew and fashion 
a character into the beauty of holiness, until 
every feature of the image of Christ shines 
in the life, as the sculptor shapes the marble 
into the form of his vision. The most radi- 
ant spiritual beauty does not make one a com- 
plete Christian. It takes service to fill up 
the measure of the stature of Christ. The 
young man said he had kept all the command- 
ments from his youth. " One thing thou lack- 
est," said the Master ; " sell all that thou hast, 
and give to the poor." Service of love was 
needed to make that morally exemplary life 
complete. 

The lesson is needed by many Christian 
people. They are good, with blameless life, 
flawless character, consistent conduct ; but they 
lack one thing, — service. Love for Christ 
should always serve. There is a story of a 
friar who was eager to win the favor of God, 
and set to work to illuminate the pages of 
the Apocalypse, after the custom of his time. 



l6o THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

He became so absorbed in his delightful oc- 
cupation that he neglected the poor and the 
sick who were suffering and dying in the 
plague. He came at last, in the course of 
his work, to the painting of the face of his 
Lord in the glory of his second coming; but 
his hand had lost its skill. He wondered why 
it was, and realized that it was because, in 
his eagerness to paint his pictures, he had 
neglected his duty of serving. 

Rebuffed and humiliated by the discovery, 
the friar drew his cowl over his head, laid 
aside his brushes, and went down among the 
sick and dying to minister to their needs. 
He wrought on, untiringly, until he himself 
was smitten with the fatal plague. Then he 
tottered back to his cell and to his easel, to 
finish his loved work before he died. He 
knelt in prayer to ask help, when, lo ! he saw 
that an angel's hand had completed the pic- 
ture of the glorified Lord, and in a manner 
far surpassing human skill. 

It is only a legend, but its lesson is well 
worthy our serious thought. Too many peo- 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. l6l 

pie in their life as Christians, while they 
strive to excel in character, in conduct, and 
in the beautiful graces of disposition, and to 
do their work among men faithfully, are for- 
getting meanwhile the law of love which bids 
every follower of Christ go about doing good 
as the Master did. To be a Christian is far 
more than to be honest, truthful, sober, in- 
dustrious, and decorous ; it is also to be a 
cross-bearer after Jesus ; to love men, and to 
serve them. Ofttimes it is to leave your fine 
room, your favorite work, your delightful com- 
panionship, your pet self-indulgence, and to 
go out among the needy, the suffering, the 
sinning, to try to do them good. The monk 
could not paint the face of the Lord while 
he was neglecting those who needed his min- 
istrations and went unhelped because he came 
not. Nor can any Christian paint the face of 
.the Master in its full beauty on his soul while 
he is neglecting any service of love. 

We may follow a little the story of what 
happened after Mary brought her alabaster 
box. Some of the disciples of Jesus were 



1 62 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

angry. There always are some who find fault 
with the way other people show their love 
for Christ. It is so even in Christian churches. 
One member criticises what another does, or 
the way he does it. It will be remembered 
that it was Judas who began this blaming of 
Mary. He said the ointment would better 
have been sold, and the proceeds given to the 
poor. St. John tells us very sadly the real mo- 
tive of this pious complaining ; not that Judas 
cared for the poor, but that he was a thief, 
and purloined the money given for the poor. 

Jesus came to Mary's defence very promptly, 
and in a way that must have wonderfully com- 
forted her hurt heart. It is a grievous sin 
against another to find fault with any sweet, 
beautiful serving of Jesus which the other 
may have done. Christ's defence and approval 
of Mary should be a comfort to all who find 
their deeds of love criticised or blamed by 
others. 

" Let her alone ; why trouble ye her ? she 
hath wrought a good work on me." The 
disciples had said it was a waste. That is 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. 1 63 

what some persons say about much that is 
done for Christ. The life is wasted, they say, 
which is poured out in self-denials and sacri- 
fices to bless others. But really the wasted 
lives are those which are devoted to pleasure 
and sin. Those who live a merely worldly life 
are wasting what it took the dying of Jesus to 
redeem. Oh, how pitiful much of fashionable, 
worldly life must appear to the angels ! 

"She hath done what she could/' That 
was high praise. She had brought her best 
to her Lord. Perhaps some of us make too 
much of our little acts and trivial sacrifices. 
Little things are acceptable if they are really 
our best. But Mary's deed was not a small 
one. The ointment she brought was very 
costly. She did not use just a little of this 
precious nard, but poured it all out on the 
head and feet of Jesus. "What she could" 
was the best she had to give. 

We may take a lesson. Do we always give 
our best to Christ ? He gave his best for 
us, and is ever giving his best to us. Do we 
not too often give him only what is left after 



164 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

we have served ourselves? Then we try to 
soothe an uneasy conscience by quoting the 
Masters commendation of Mary, " She hath 
done what she could." Ah, Mary's "what 
she could " was a most costly service. It was 
the costliest of all her possessions that she 
gave. The word of Jesus about her and her 
gift has no possible comfort for us if our little 
is not our best. The widow's mites were her 
best, small though the money value was — she 
gave all she had. The poor woman's cup of 
cold water was all she could give. But if we 
give only a trifle out of our abundance, we 
are not doing what we could. 

It is worthy of notice that the alabaster 
box itself was broken in this holy service. 
Nothing was kept back. Broken things have 
an important place in the Bible. Gideon's 
pitchers were broken as his men revealed them- 
selves to the enemy. Paul and his compan- 
ions escaped from the sea on broken pieces 
of the ship. It is the broken heart that God 
accepts. The body of Jesus was broken that 
it might become bread of life for the world. 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. 1 65 

Out of sorrow's broken things God builds up 
radiant beauty. Broken earthly hopes be- 
come ofttimes the beginnings of richest heav- 
enly blessings. We do not get the best out 
of anything until it is broken. 

"They tell me I must bruise 
The rose's leaf 
Ere I can keep and use 
Its fragrance brief. 

They tell me I must break 

The skylark's heart 
Ere her cage song will make 

The silence start. 

They tell me love must bleed, 

And friendship weep, 
Ere in my deepest need 

I touch that deep. 

Must it be always so 

With precious things ? 
Must they be bruised, and go 

With beaten wings ? 

Ah, yes ! By crushing days, 

By caging nights, by scar 
Of thorns and stony ways, 

These blessings are." 



1 66 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Even sorrow is not too great a price to pay 
for the blessings which can come only through 
grief and pain. We must not be afraid to be 
broken if that is God's will ; that is the way 
God would make us vessels meet for his ser- 
vice. Only by breaking the alabaster vase 
can the ointment that is in it give out its 
rich perfume. 

"She hath anointed my body aforehand for 
the burying." I like the word aforehand. 
Nicodemus, after Jesus was dead, brought a 
large quantity of spices and ointments to put 
about his body when it was laid to rest in the 
tomb. That was well ; it was a beautiful deed. 
It honored the Master. We never can cease 
to be grateful to Nicodemus, whose long-time 
shy love at last found such noble expression, 
in helping to give fitting burial to him whom 
we love so deeply. But Mary's deed was bet- 
ter ; she brought her perfume aforehand, when 
it could give pleasure, comfort, and strength- 
ening, to the Master in his time of deepest 
sorrow. We know that his heart was glad- 
dened by the act of love. It made his spirit 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. 1 67 

a little stronger for the events of that last 
sad week. " She hath wrought a good work 
on me." 

We should get a lesson in friendship's min- 
istry. Too many wait until those they love 
are dead, and then bring their alabaster boxes 
of affection and break them. They keep silent 
about their love when words would mean so 
much, would give such cheer, encouragement, 
and hope, and then, when the friend lies in 
the coffin, their lips are unsealed, and speak 
out their glowing tribute on ears that heed 
not the laggard praise. 

Many persons go through life, struggling 
bravely with difficulty, temptation, and hard- 
ship, carrying burdens too heavy for them, 
pouring out their love in unselfish serving of 
others, and yet are scarcely ever cheered by a 
word of approval or commendation, or by deli- 
cate tenderness of friendship ; then, when they 
lie silent in death, a whole circle of admiring 
friends gathers to do them honor. Every one 
remembers a personal kindness received, a 
favor shown, some help given, and speaks of 



1 68 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

it in grateful words. Letters full of appre- 
ciation, commendation, and gratitude are writ- 
ten to sorrowing friends. Flowers are sent 
and piled about the coffin, enough to have 
strewn every hard path of the long years of 
struggle. How surprised some good men and 
women would be, after lives with scarcely a word 
of affection to cheer their hearts, were they 
to awake suddenly in the midst of their friends, 
a few hours after their death, and hear the 
testimonies that are falling from every tongue, 
the appreciations, the grateful words of love, 
the rememberings of kindness ! They had 
never dreamed in life that they had so many 
friends, that so many had thought well of 
them, that they were helpful to so many. 

After a long and worthy life, given up to 
lowly ministry, a good clergyman was called 
home. Soon after his death, there was a meet- 
ing of his friends, and many of them spoke of 
his beautiful life. Incidents were given show- 
ing how his labors had been blessed. Out of 
full hearts one after another gave grateful 
tribute of love. The minister's widow was 



JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS. 1 69 

present ; and when all the kindly words had 
been spoken, she thanked the friends for what 
they had said. Then she asked, amid her tears, 
" But why did you never tell him these things 
while he was living ? " 

Yes, why not ? He had wrought for forty 
years in a most unselfish way. He had poured 
out his life without stint. He had carried his 
people in his heart by day and by night, never 
sparing himself in any way when he could be 
of use to one of God's children. His people 
were devoted to him, loved him, and appre- 
ciated his labors. Yet rarely, all those years, 
had any of them told him of the love that 
was in their hearts for him, or of their grati- 
tude for service given or good received. He 
was conscious of the Master's approval, and 
this cheered him, — it was the commendation 
he sought; but it would have comforted him 
many a time, and made the burdens seem 
lighter and the toil easier and the joy of serv- 
ing deeper, if his people — those he loved and 
lived for, and helped in so many ways — had 
sometimes told him how much he was to them. 



170 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

All about us move, these common days, 
those who would be strengthened and com- 
forted by the good cheer which we could give. 
Let us not reserve all the flowers for coffin- 
lids. Let us not keep our alabaster boxes 
sealed and unbroken till our loved ones are 
dead. Let us show kindness when kindness 
will do good. It will make sorrow all the 
harder to bear if we have to say beside our 
dead, "I might have brightened the way a 
little if only I had been kinder." 

It was wonderful honoring which Jesus gave 
to Mary's deed, when he said that wherever 
the gospel should be preached throughout the 
whole world the story of this anointing should 
be told. So, right in among the memorials 
of his own death, this ministry of love is en- 
shrined. As the odor of the ointment filled 
all the room where the guests sat at table, 
so the aroma of Mary's love fills all the Chris- 
tian world to-day. The influence of her deed, 
with the Master's honoring of it, has shed a 
benediction on countless homes, making hearts 
gentler, and lives sweeter and truer. 



CHAPTER XL 

JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 

Not all regret; the face will shine 

Upon me while I muse alone ; 

And that dear voice, I once have known, 
Still speak to me of me and mine: 

Yet less of sorrow lives in me 

For days of happy commune dead; 
Less yearning for the friendship fled, 

Than some strong bond which is to be. 

Tennyson. 

A gospel with no comfort for sorrow would 
not meet the deepest needs of human hearts. 
If Jesus were a friend only for bright hours, 
there would be much of experience into which 
he could not enter. But the gospel breathes 
comfort on every page ; and Jesus is a friend 
for lonely hours and times of grief and pain, 
as well as for sunny paths and days of glad- 
ness and song. He went to a marriage feast, 
and wrought his first miracle to prolong the 

171 



172 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

festivity ; but he went also to the home of 
grief, and turned its sorrow into joy. 

It is well worth our while to study Jesus 
as a comforter, to learn how he comforted 
his friends. For one thing, it will teach us 
how to find consolation when we are in trouble. 
This is a point at which, with many Chris- 
tians, the gospel seems oftenest to fail. In 
the days of the unbroken circle and of human 
gladness, the friends of Jesus rejoice in his 
love, and walk in his light with songs ; but 
when ties are broken, and grief enters the 
home, the hearts that were so full of praise 
refuse to take the consolation of the gospel. 
This ought not so to be. If we knew Christ 
as a comforter, we woldd sing our songs of 
trust even in the night. 

Another help that we may get from such 
a study of Jesus will be power to become a 
true comforter of others. This every Chris- 
tian should seek to be, but this very few 
Christians really are. Most of us would bet- 
ter stay away altogether from our friends in 
their times of sorrow, than go to them as we 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 1 73 

do. Instead of being comforters to make them 
stronger to endure, we only make their grief 
seem bitterer, and their loss more unendura- 
ble, doing them harm instead of good. This 
is because we have not learned the art of 
giving comfort. Our Master should be our 
teacher; and if we study his method, we shall 
know how to be a blessing to our friends in 
their times of loss and pain. 

Much of the ministry of Jesus was with 
those who were in trouble. There was one 
special occasion, however, when there was a 
great sorrow in the circle of his best friends. 
We may learn many lessons if we read over 
thoughtfully the story of the way Jesus com- 
forted them. 

It was the Bethany home. Before the sor- 
row came, Jesus was a familiar guest, a close 
and intimate friend of the members of the 
household. He always had kindly welcome 
and generous hospitality when he came to 
their door. They did not make his acquaint- 
ance for the first time when their hearts were 
broken. They had known him for a long time, 



174 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

and had listened to his gracious words when 
there was no grief in their home. This made 
it easy to turn to him and to receive his com- 
fort when the dark days of sorrow came. 

There are some who think of Christ only 
as a friend whom they will need in trouble. 
In their time of unbroken gladness they do 
not seek his friendship. Then, when trouble 
comes suddenly, they do not know how or 
where to find the Comforter. Wiser far are 
they who take Christ into their life in the 
glad days when the joy is unbroken. He 
blesses their joy. A happy home is all the 
happier because Jesus is a familiar guest in 
it. Love is all the sweeter because of his 
benediction. Then, when sorrow's shadow 
falls, there is light in the darkness. 

There seems to be no need of the stars in 
the daytime, for the sunshine then floods all 
earth's paths. But when the sun goes down, 
and God's great splendor of stars appears 
hanging over us, dropping their soft, quiet 
light upon us, how glad we are that they were 
there all the while, waiting to be revealed ! 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 1 75 

So it is that the friendship of Jesus in the 
happy years hangs above our heads the stars 
of heavenly comfort. We do not seem to 
need them at the time, and we scarcely know 
that they are there ; we certainly have no true 
realization of the blessing that hides in the 
shining words. But when, one sad day, the 
light of human joy is suddenly darkened, then 
the divine comforts reveal themselves. We 
do not have to hasten here and there in piti- 
able distress, trying to find consolation, for 
we have it already in the love and grace of 
Christ. The Friend we took into our life in 
the joy-days stands close beside us now in 
our sadness, and his friendship never before 
seemed so precious, so tender, so divine. 

When Lazarus fell sick, Jesus was in another 
part of the country. As the case grew hope- 
less, the sisters sent a message to Jesus to 
say, "He whom thou lovest is sick." The 
message seems remarkable. There was no 
urgency expressed in it, no wild, passionate 
pleading that Jesus would hasten to come. 
Its few words told of the quietness and con- 



176 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

fidence of trusting hearts. We get a lesson 
concerning the way we should pray when we 
are in distress. " Your Father knoweth what 
things ye have need of," and there is no need 
for piteous clamor. Far better is the prayer 
of faith, which lays the burden upon the di- 
vine heart, and leaves it there without anxiety. 
It is enough, when a beloved one is lying low, 
to say, " Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick." 

We are surprised, as we read the narrative, 
that Jesus did not respond immediately to 
this message from his friends. But he waited 
two days before he set out for Bethany. We 
cannot tell why he did this, but there is some- 
thing very comforting in the words that tell 
us of the delay. " Now Jesus loved Martha, 
and her sister, and Lazarus. When, therefore, 
he heard that Lazarus was sick, he abode at 
that time two days in the place where he 
was." In some way the delay was because 
of his love for all the household. Perhaps the 
meaning is that through the dying of Lazarus 
blessing would come to them all. 

At length he reached Bethany. Lazarus 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 1 77 

had been dead four days. The family had 
many friends ; and their house was filled with 
those who had come, after the custom of the 
times, to console them. Jesus lingered at 
some distance from the house, perhaps not 
caring to enter among those who in the con- 
ventional way were mourning with the family. 
He wished to meet the sorrowing sisters in 
a quiet place alone. So he tarried outside 
the village, probably sending a message to 
Martha, telling her that he was coming. Soon 
Martha met him. 

We may think of the eagerness of her heart 
to get into his presence when she heard that 
he was near. What a relief it must have 
been to her, after the noisy grief that filled 
her home, to get into the quiet, peaceful pres- 
ence of Jesus ! He was not disturbed. His 
face was full of sympathy, and it was easy 
to see there the tokens of deep and very real 
grief, but his peace was not broken. He was 
calm and composed. Martha must have felt 
herself at once comforted by his mere pres- 
ence. It was quieting and reassuring. 



178 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

The first thing to do when we need comfort 
is to get into the presence of Christ. Human 
friendship means well when it hastens to us 
in our sorrow. It feels that it must do some- 
thing for us, that to stay away and do nothing 
would be unkindness. Then, when it comes, 
it feels that it must talk, and must talk about 
our sorrow. It feels that it must go over all 
the details, questioning us until it seems as 
if our heart would break with answering. Our 
friends think that they must explore with us 
all the depths of our grief, dwelling upon the 
elements that are specially poignant. The 
result of all this " comforting " is that our 
burden of sorrow is made heavier instead of 
lighter, and we are less brave and strong than 
before to bear it. If we would be truly com- 
forted we would better flee away to Christ ; 
for in his presence we shall find consolation, 
which gives peace and strength and joy. 

It is worth our while to note the comfort 
which Jesus gave to these sorrowing sisters. 
First, he lifted the veil, and gave them a 
glimpse of what lies beyond death. "Thy 



JESUS COMFORTING BIS FRIENDS. 1 79 

brother shall rise again." " I am the resurrec- 
tion, and the life : he that believeth on me, 
though he die, yet shall he live : and whosoever 
liveth and believeth on me shall never die." 
Thus he opened a great window into the other 
world. It is plainer to us than it could be to 
Martha and Mary ; for a little while after he 
spoke these words, Jesus himself passed through 
death, coming again from the grave in immor- 
tal life. It is a wonderful comfort to those 
who sorrow over the departure of a Christian 
friend to know the true teaching of the New 
Testament on the subject of dying. Death is 
not the end ; it is a door which leads into 
fulness of life. 

Perhaps many in bereavement, though be- 
lieving the doctrine of a future resurrection, 
fail to get present comfort from it. Jesus 
assured Martha that her brother should rise 
again. "Yes, I know that he shall rise again 
in the resurrection at the last day." Her 
words show that this hope was too distant 
to give her much comfort. Her sense of pres- 
ent loss outweighed every other thought and 



l8o THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

feeling. She craved back again the compan- 
ionship she had lost. Who that has stood by 
the grave of a precious friend has not expe- 
rienced the same feeling of inadequateness in 
the consolation that comes from even the 
strongest belief in a far-off rising again of 
all who are in their graves ? 

The reply of Jesus to Martha's hungry heart- 
cry was very rich in its comfort. " I am the 
resurrection." This is one of the wonderful 
present tenses of Christian hope. Martha had 
spoken of a resurrection far away. " I am the 
resurrection," Jesus declared. It was some- 
thing present, not remote. His words em- 
brace the whole blessed truth of immortal life. 
" Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall 
never die." There is no death for those who 
are in Christ. The body dies, but the person 
lives on. The resurrection may be in the 
future, but really there is no break in the life 
of a believer in Christ. He is not here ; our 
eyes see him not, our ears hear not his voice, 
we cannot touch him with our hands, but he 
still lives and thinks and feels and loves. No 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. l8l 

power in his being has been quenched by dying, 
no beauty dimmed, no faculty destroyed. 

This is a part of the comfort which Jesus 
gave to his friends in their bereavement. He 
assured them that there is no death, that all 
who believe in him have eternal life. There 
remains for those who stay here the pain of 
separation and of loneliness, but for those who 
have passed over we need have no fear. 

How does Jesus comfort his friends who 
are left ? As we read over the story of the 
sorrow of the Bethany home we find the answer 
to our question. You say, " He brought back 
their dead, thus comforting them with the lit- 
eral undoing of the work of death and grief. 
If only he would do this now, in every case 
where love cries to him, that would be comfort 
indeed." But we must remember that the 
return of Lazarus to his home was only a tem- 
porary restoration. He came back to the old 
life of mortality, of temptation, of sickness 
and pain and death. He came back only for 
a season. It was not a resurrection to immor- 
tal life ; it was only a restoration to mortal 



1 82 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

life. He must pass again through the mystery 
of dying, and his sisters must a second time 
experience the agony of separation and lone- 
liness. We can scarcely call it comfort ; it 
was merely a postponement for a little while 
of the final separation. 

But Jesus gave the sisters true consoling 
besides this. His mere presence brought them 
comfort. They knew that he loved them. 
Many times before when he had entered their 
home he had brought a benediction. They 
had a feeling of security and peace in his 
presence. Even their inconsolable grief lost 
something of its poignancy when the light 
of his face fell upon them. Every strong, 
tender, and true human love has a wondrous 
comforting power. We can pass through a 
sore trial if a trusted friend is beside us. The 
believer can endure any sorrow if Jesus is 
with him. 

Another element of comfort for these sor- 
rowing sisters was in the sympathy of Jesus. 
He showed this sympathy with them in coming 
all the way from Perea, to be with them in 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 1 83 

their time of distress. He showed it in his 
bearing toward them and his conversation with 
them. There is a wonderful gentleness in 
his manner as he receives first one and then 
the other sister. Mary's grief was deeper than 
Martha's ; and when Jesus saw her weeping, 
and her friends who were with her weeping, 
he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. 
Then, in the shortest verse in the Bible, we 
have a window into the very heart of Christ, 
and find there most wonderful sympathy. 

"Jesus wept." It is a great comfort in 
time of sorrow to have even human sympathy, 
to know that somebody cares, that some one 
feels with us. The measure of the comfort 
in such cases is in proportion to the honor 
in which we hold the person. It would have 
had something — very much — of comfort for 
the sisters, if John or Peter or James had 
wept with them beside their brother's grave. 
But the tears of Jesus meant incalculably 
more; they told of the holiest sympathy that 
this world ever saw — the Son of God wept 
with two sisters in a great human sorrow. 



1 84 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

This shortest verse was not written merely 
as a fragment of a narrative — it contains a 
revealing of the heart of Jesus for all time. 
Wherever a friend of Jesus is sorrowing, One 
stands by, unseen, who shares the grief, whose 
heart feels every pang of the sorrow. There 
is immeasurable comfort in this thought that 
the Son of God suffers with us in our suffer- 
ing, is afflicted in all our affliction. We can 
endure our trouble more quietly when we 
know that God understands all about it. 

There is yet another thing in the manner 
of Christ's comforting his friends which is 
very suggestive. His sympathy was not a 
mere sentiment. Too often human sympathy 
is nothing but a sentiment. Our friends cry 
with us, and then pass by on the other side. 
They tell us they are sorry for us, but they 
do nothing to help us. The sympathy of Jesus 
at Bethany was very practical. Not only did 
he show his love to his friends by coming 
away from his work in another province, to 
be with them in their sore trouble ; not only 
did he speak to them words of divine comfort, 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 1 85 

words which have made a shining track through 
the world ever since ; not only did he weep 
with them in their grief, — but he wrought the 
greatest of all his many miracles to restore 
the joy of their hearts and their home. It was 
a costly miracle, too, for it led to his own 
death. 

Yet, knowing well what would come from 
this ministry of friendship, he hesitated not. 
For some reason he saw that it would be 
indeed a blessing to his friends to bring back 
the dead. It was because he loved the sisters 
and the brother that he lingered, and did not 
hasten when the message reached him beyond 
the river. We may be sure, therefore, that 
the raising of Lazarus, though only to a little 
more of the old life of weakness, had a bless- 
ing in it for the family. This was the best 
way in which Jesus could show his sympathy, 
the best comfort he could give his friends. 

No doubt thousands of other friends of 
Jesus in the sorrow of bereavement have 
wished that he would comfort them in like 
way, by giving back their beloved. Ofttimes 



1 86 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

he does what is in effect the same, — in answer 
to the prayer of faith he spares the lives of 
those who are dear. When we pray for our 
sick friends, we only ask submissively that 
they may recover. "Not my will, but thine 
be done," is the refrain of our pleading. Even 
our most passionate longing we subdue in 
the quiet confidence of our faith. If it is not 
best for our dear ones ; if it would not be 
a real blessing ; if it is not God's way, — then 
"Thy will be done." If we pray the prayer 
of faith, we must believe that the issue, what- 
ever it may be, is God's best for us. 

If our friend is taken away after such com- 
mitting of faith to God's wisdom and love, 
there is immeasurable comfort at once in the 
confidence that it was God's will. Then, while 
no miracle is wrought, bringing back our 
dead, the sympathy of Christ yet brings prac- 
tical consolation. The word comfort means 
strengthening. We are helped to bear our 
sorrow. 

The teaching of the Scriptures is that when 
we come with our trials to God, he either re- 



JESUS COMFORTING BIS FRIENDS. 1 87 

lieves us of them, or gives us the grace we 
need to endure them. He does not promise 
to lift away the burden that we cast upon 
him, but he will sustain us in our bearing 
of the burden. When the human presence is 
taken from us, Christ comes nearer than be- 
fore, and reveals to us more of his love and 
grace. 

The problem of sorrow in a Christian life 
is a very serious one. It is important that 
we have a clear understanding upon the sub- 
ject, that we may receive blessing and not 
hurt from our experience. Every sorrow that 
comes into our life brings us something good 
from God; but we may reject the good, and 
if we do, we receive evil instead. The comfort 
God gives is not the taking away of the trou- 
ble, nor is it the dulling of our heart's sensi- 
bilities so that we shall not feel the pain so 
keenly. God's comfort is strength to endure 
in the experience. If we put our life into 
the hands of Christ in the time of sorrow, and 
with quiet faith and sweet trust go on with 
our duty, all shall be well. If we resist and 



1 88 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

struggle and rebel, we shall not only miss the 
blessing of comfort that is infolded for us in 
our sorrow, but we shall receive hurt in our 
own life. When one is soured and embittered 
by trial, one has received hurt rather than 
blessing ; but if we accept our sorrow with 
love and trust, we shall come out of it enriched 
in life and character, and prepared for better 
work and greater usefulness. 

There is a picture of a woman sitting by the 
sea in deep grief. The dark waters have swal- 
lowed up her heart's treasures, and her sorrow 
is inconsolable. Close behind her is an angel 
striking his harp, — - the Angel of Consolation. 
But the woman in her stony grief sees not 
the angel's shining form, nor hears the music 
of his harp. Too often this is the picture in 
Christian homes. With all the boundlessness 
of God's love and mercy, the heart remains 
uncomforted. 

This ought not so to be. There is in Jesus 
Christ an infinite resource of consolation, and 
we have only to open our heart to receive it. 
Then we shall pass through sorrow sustained 



JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS. 1 89 

by divine help and love, and shall come from 
it enriched in character, and blessed in every 
phase of life. The griefs of our life set les- 
sons for us to learn. In every pain is the 
seed of a blessing. In every tear a rainbow 
hides. Dr. Babcock puts it well in his lines : — 

The dark-brown mould's upturned 
By the sharp-pointed plough — 
And I've a lesson learned. 

My life is but a field, 

Stretched out beneath God's sky, 

Some harvest rich to yield. 

Where grows the golden grain? 
Where faith? Where sympathy? 
In a furrow cut by pain. 



CHAPTER XII. 

JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 

How many souls — his loved ones — 

Dwell lonely and apart, 

Hiding from all but One above 

The fragrance of their heart. 

Procter. 

Not all the friends of Jesus were open 
friends. No doubt many believed on him who 
had not the courage to confess him. Two of 
his secret friends performed such an impor- 
tant part at the close of his life, boldly honor- 
ing him, that the story of their discipleship 
is worthy of our careful study. 

One of these is mentioned several times ; 
the other we meet nowhere until he suddenly 
emerges from the shadows of his secret friend- 
ship, when the body of Jesus hung dead on 
the cross, and boldly asks leave to take it 
away, and with due honor bury it. 

190 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 191 

Several facts concerning Joseph are given 
in the Gospels. He was a rich man. Thus 
an ancient prophecy was fulfilled. According 
to Isaiah, the Messiah was to make his grave 
with the rich. This prediction seemed very 
unlikely of fulfilment when Jesus hung on the 
cross dying. He had no burying-place of his 
own, and none of his known disciples could 
provide him with a tomb among the rich. It 
looked as if his body must be cast into the 
Potter's Field with the bodies of the two 
criminals who hung beside him. Then came 
Joseph, a rich man, and buried Jesus in his 
own new tomb. " He made his grave with 
the rich." 

Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin. 
This gave him honor among men, and he must 
have been of good reputation to be chosen to 
so exalted a position. We are told also that 
he was a good man and devout, and had not 
consented to the counsel and deed of the court 
in condemning Jesus. Perhaps he had ab- 
sented himself from the meeting of the San- 
hedrin when Jesus was before the court. If 



192 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

he were present, he took no part in the con- 
demning of the prisoner. 

Then it is said further that he was " a dis- 
ciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the 
Jews." That is, he was one of the friends 
of Jesus, believing in his Messiahship. We 
have no way of knowing how long he had 
been a disciple, but it is evident that the 
friendship had existed for some time. We 
may suppose that Joseph had sought Jesus 
quietly, perhaps by night, receiving instruc- 
tion from him, communing with him, drink- 
ing in his spirit ; but he had never yet openly 
declared his discipleship. 

The reason for this hiding of his belief in 
Jesus is frankly given, — " for fear of the 
Jews." He lacked courage to confess himself 
"one of this man's friends." We cannot well 
understand what it would have cost Joseph, in 
his high place as a ruler, to say, "I believe 
that Jesus of Nazareth is our Messiah." It 
is easy for us to condemn him as wanting in 
courage, but we must put ourselves back in 
his place when we think of what he failed 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 1 93 

to do. This was before Jesus was glorified. 
He was a lowly man of sorrows. Many of 
the common people had followed him ; but it 
was chiefly to see his miracles, and to gather 
benefit for themselves from his power. There 
was only a little band of true disciples, and 
among these were none of the rulers and 
great men of the people. There is no evi- 
dence that one rabbi, one member of the San- 
hedrin, one priest, one aristocratic or cultured 
Jew, was among the followers of Jesus during 
his life. 

It would have taken sublime courage for 
one of these to confess Jesus as the Messiah, 
and the cost of such avowal would have been 
incalculable. A number of years later, when 
Christianity had become an acknowledged 
power in the world, St. Paul tells us that he 
had to suffer the loss of all things in becom- 
ing a Christian. For Joseph, a member of 
the highest court of the Jews, to have said 
to his fellow-members in those days, before 
the death of Jesus, " I believe in this Nazarene 
whom you are plotting to kill, and I am one 



194 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

of his disciples and friends," would have taken 
a courage which too few men possess. 

However, one need not apologize for Joseph. 
The record frankly admits his fault, his weak- 
ness ; for it is never a noble or a manly thing 
to be afraid of man or devil when duty is 
clear. Yet we are told distinctly that he 
was really a disciple of Jesus ; though it was 
secretly, and though the reason for the se- 
crecy was an unworthy one, — fear of the Jews. 
Jesus had not refused his discipleship because 
of its impairment. He had not said to him, 
"Unless you rise up in your place in the 
court-room, and tell your associates that you 
believe in me, and are going to follow me, 
you cannot be my disciple, and I will not 
have you as my friend." Evidently Jesus had 
accepted Joseph as a disciple, even in the shy 
way he had come to him ; and it seems proba- 
ble that a close and deep friendship existed 
between the two men. Possibly it may have 
existed for many months ; and no doubt Joseph 
had been a comfort to Jesus in many ways 
before his death, although the world did not 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 1 95 

know that this noble and honorable councillor 
was his friend at all. 

The other secret friend of Jesus who assisted 
in his burial was Nicodemus. It was during 
the early weeks or months of our Lord's pub- 
lic ministry that he came to Jesus for the first 
time. It is specially mentioned that he came 
by night. Nicodemus also was a man of dis- 
tinction, — a member of the Sanhedrin and a 
Pharisee, belonging thus to the class highest 
in rank among his people. 

A great deal of blame has been charged 
against Nicodemus because he came to Jesus 
by night, but again we must put ourselves 
back into his circumstances before we can 
judge intelligently and fairly of his conduct. 
Very few persons believed in Jesus when 
Nicodemus first sought him by night. Be- 
sides, may not night have been the best time 
for a public and prominent man to see Jesus ? 
His days were filled — throngs were always 
about him, and there was little opportunity 
then for earnest and satisfactory conversation. 
In the evening Nicodemus could sit down 



I96 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS, 

with Jesus for a long, quiet talk without fear 
of interruption. 

Then Nicodemus came first only as an in- 
quirer. He was not then ready to be a dis- 
ciple. " Rabbi, we know that thou art a 
teacher come from God," was all he could say 
that first night. He did not concede Jesus' 
Messiahship. He knew him then only by 
what he had heard of his miracles. He was 
not ready yet to declare that the son of the car- 
penter was the Christ, the Son of God. When 
we remember the common Jewish expecta- 
tions regarding the Messiah, and then the 
lowliness of Jesus and the high rank of Nico- 
demus, we may understand that it required 
courage and deep earnestness of soul for this 
" master in Israel " to come at all to the 
peasant rabbi from Galilee as a seeker after 
truth and light. It is scarcely surprising, 
therefore, that he came by night. 

Then, at that time the teaching and work 
of Jesus were only beginning. There had 
been some miracles, and it is written that 
because of these many had believed in the 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 1 97 

name of Jesus. Already, however, there had 
been a sharp conflict with the priests and 
rulers. Jesus had driven out those who were 
profaning the temple by using it for purposes 
of trade. This act had aroused intense bitter- 
ness against Jesus among the ruling classes 
to which Nicodemus belonged. This made 
it specially hard for any one of the rulers to 
come among the friends of Jesus, or to show 
even the least sympathy with him. 

No doubt Nicodemus in some degree lacked 
the heroic quality. He was not a John Knox 
or a Martin Luther. Each time his name is 
mentioned he shows timidity, and a disposi- 
tion to remain hidden. Even in the noble 
deed of the day Jesus died, it is almost certain 
that Nicodemus was inspired to his part by 
the greater courage of Joseph. 

Yet we must mark that Jesus said not one 
word to chide or blame Nicodemus when he 
came by night. He accepted him as a dis- 
ciple, and at once began to teach him the 
great truths of his kingdom. We are not 
told that the ruler came more than once; but 



198 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

we may suppose that whenever Jesus was in 
Jerusalem, Nicodemus sought him under the 
cover of the night, and sat at his feet as a 
learner. Doubtless Jesus and he were friends 
all the three years that passed between that 
first night when they talked of the new birth, 
and the day when this noble councillor as- 
sisted his fellow-member of the Sanhedrin in 
giving honorable and loving burial to this 
Teacher come from God. 

Once we have a glimpse of Nicodemus in 
his place in the Sanhedrin. Jesus has re- 
turned to Jerusalem, and multitudes follow him 
to hear his words. Many believe on him. 
The Pharisees and priests are filled with envy 
that this peasant from Galilee should have such 
tremendous influence among the people. They 
feel that the power is passing out of their 
hands, and that they must do something to 
silence the voice the people so love to hear. 

A meeting of the Great Council is called to 
decide what to do. Officers are sent to arrest 
Jesus, and bring him to the bar of the court. 
The officers find Jesus in the temple, in the 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 1 99 

midst of an eager throng, to whom he is speak- 
ing in his gracious, winning way. That was 
the day he said, " If any man thirst, let him 
come unto me, and drink." The officers listen 
as the wonderful words fall from his lips, and 
they, too, become interested ; their attention is 
enchained ; they come under the same spell 
which holds all the multitude. They linger 
till his discourse is ended ; and then, instead of 
arresting him, they go back without him, only 
giving to the judges as reason for not obeying, 
" Never man spake like this man." 

The members of the court were enraged at 
this failure of their effort. Even their own 
police officers had proved untrue. "Are ye 
also deceived or led astray ? " they cry in an- 
ger. Then they ask, " Have any of the rulers 
or of the Pharisees believed on him ? But this 
multitude which knoweth not the law, are ac- 
cursed." They would have it that only the 
ignorant masses had been led away by this 
delusion ; none of the great men, the wise 
men, had accepted this Nazarene as the Mes- 
siah. They did not suspect that at least one 



200 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

of their own number, possibly two, had been 
going by night to hear this young rabbi. 

It was a serious moment for Nicodemus. 
He sat there in the council, and saw the fury 
of his brother judges. In his heart he was a 
friend of Jesus. He believed that he was the 
Messiah. Loyalty to his friend, to the truth, 
and to his own conscience, demanded that he 
should cast away the veil he was wearing, and 
reveal his faith in Jesus. At least he must 
say some word on behalf of the innocent man 
whom his fellow-members were determined 
to destroy. It was a testing-time for Nicode- 
mus, and sore was the struggle between timid- 
ity and a sense of duty. The storm in the 
court-room was ready to burst ; the council was 
about taking violent measures against Jesus. 
We know not what would have happened if 
no voice had been lifted for fair trial before 
condemnation. But then Nicodemus arose, 
and in the midst of the terrible excitement 
spoke quietly and calmly his few words, — 

"Doth our law judge a man, except it first 
hear from himself and know what he doeth? " 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 201 

It was only a plea for fairness and for jus- 
tice ; but it showed the working of a heart 
that would be true to itself, in some measure 
at least, in spite of its shyness and shrink- 
ing, and in spite of the peril of the hour. The 
question at first excited anger and contempt 
against Nicodemus himself ; but it checked the 
gathering tides of violence, probably prevent- 
ing a public outbreak. 

We may note progress in the friendship of 
this secret disciple. During the two years 
since he first came to Jesus by night the 
seed dropped into his heart that night had 
been growing silently. Nicodemus was not 
yet ready to come out boldly as a disciple 
of Jesus ; but he proved himself the friend of 
Jesus, even by the few words he spoke in the 
council when it required firm courage to speak 
at all. " He who at the first could come to 
Jesus only by night, now stands by him in 
open day, and in the face of the most formid- 
able opposition, before which the courage of 
the strongest might have quailed. " 

It is beautiful to see young Christians, as 



202 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

the days pass, growing more and more confi- 
dent and heroic in their confession of Christ. 
At first they are shy, retiring, timid, and 
disposed to shrink from public revealing of 
themselves. But if, as they receive more of 
the Spirit of God in their heart, they grow 
more courageous in speaking for Christ and 
in showing their colors, they prove that they 
are true disciples, learners, growing in grace. 

The only other mention of Nicodemus is 
some months after the heroic word spoken 
in the council. What has been going on in 
his experience, meanwhile, we do not know. 
There is no evidence that he has yet declared 
himself a follower of Jesus. He is still a 
secret disciple. But the hidden life in his 
heart has still been growing. 

One day a terrible thing happened. Jesus 
was crucified. In their fright and panic all 
his friends at first forsook him, some of them, 
however, gathering back, with broken hearts, 
and standing about his cross. But never was 
there a more hopeless company of men in 
this world than the disciples of Jesus that 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 203 

Good Friday, when their Master hung upon 
the cross. They did not understand the mean- 
ing of the cross as we do to-day, — they 
thought it meant defeat for all the hopes 
they had cherished. They stood round the 
cross in the despair of hopeless grief. 

They were also powerless to do anything 
to show their love, or to honor the body of 
their Friend. They were poor and unknown 
men, without influence. None of them had 
a grave in which the body could be laid. Nor 
had they power to get leave to take the body 
away ; it required a name of influence to get 
this permission. Their love was equal to any- 
thing, but they were helpless. In the dishonor 
of that day all the friends of Jesus shared. 

What could be done ? Soon the three bodies 
on the crosses would be taken down by rude 
hands of heartless men, and cast into the 
Potter's Field in an indistinguishable heap. 

No ; there is a friend at Pilate's door. He 
is a man of rank among the Jews — a rich 
man too. He makes a strange request, — he 
asks leave to take the body of Jesus away 



204 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

for burial. Doubtless Pilate was surprised that 
a member of the court which had condemned 
Jesus should now desire to honor his body, 
but he granted the request ; perhaps he was 
glad thus to end a case which had cost him 
so much trouble. Joseph took charge of the 
burial of the body of Jesus. 

Then came another rich man and joined 
Joseph. " There came also Nicodemus, he 
who at the first came to him by night, bring- 
ing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a 
hundred pound weight. So they took the 
body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths 
with the spices, as the custom of the Jews 
is to bury." It certainly is remarkable that 
the two men who thus met in honoring the 
body of Jesus had both been his secret disci- 
ples, hidden friends, who until now had not 
had courage to avow their friendship and 
discipleship. 

No doubt there were many other secret 
friends of Jesus who during his life did not 
publicly confess him. The great harvest of 
the day of Pentecost brought out many of 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 205 

these for the first time. No doubt there al- 
ways are many who love Christ, believe on him, 
and are following him in secret. They come 
to Jesus by night. They creep to his feet 
when no eye is looking at them. They cannot 
brave the gaze of their fellowmen. They are 
shy and timid. We may not say one harsh 
word regarding such disciples. The Master 
said not one word implying blame of his secret 
disciples. 

Yet it cannot be doubted that secret disci- 
pleship is incomplete. It is not just to Christ 
himself that we should receive the blessings 
of his love and grace, and not speak of him 
to the world. We owe it to him who gave 
himself for us to speak his name wherever 
we go, and to honor him in every way. Secret 
discipleship does not fulfil love's duty to the 
world. If we have found that which has blessed 
us richly, we owe it to others to tell them about 
it. To hide away in our own heart the knowl- 
edge of Christ is to rob those who do not 
know of him. It is the worst selfishness to be 
willing to be saved alone. Further, secret dis- 



206 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

cipleship misses the fulness of blessing which 
comes to him who confesses Christ before men. 
It is he who believes with his heart and con- 
fesses with his mouth, who has promise of sal- 
vation. Confession is half of faith. Secret 
discipleship is repressed, restrained, confined, 
and is therefore hampered, hindered,- stunted 
discipleship. It never can grow into the best 
possible strength and richness of life. It is 
only when one stands before the world in per- 
fect freedom, with nothing to conceal, that one 
grows into the fullest, loveliest Christlikeness. 
To have the friendship of Christ, and to hide 
it from men. is to lose its blessing out of our 
own heart. 



" To lie by the river of life and see it run to waste, 
To eat of the tree of heaven while the nations go unfed, 
To taste the full salvation — the only one to taste — 
To live while the rest are lost — oh, better by far be dead ! 

For to share is the bliss of heaven, as it is the joy of earth; 
And the unshared bread lacks savor, and the wine unshared, 

lacks zest; 
And the joy of the soul redeemed would be little, little worth 
If, content with its own security, it could forget the rest." 



JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS. 20J 

In the case of Nicodemus and Joseph, Jesus 
was very gentle with timidity ; but under the 
nurture of his gentleness timidity grew into 
noble courage. Yet, beautiful as was their 
deed that day, who will not say that it came 
too late for fullest honoring of the Master ? 
It would have been better if they had shown 
their friendship while he was living, to have 
cheered him by their love. Mary's ointment 
poured upon the tired feet of Jesus before his 
death was better than the spices of Nicodemus 
piled about his body in the grave. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 

" What meaneth it that we should weep 
More for our joys than for our fears, — 
That we should sometimes smile at grief, 
And look at pleasure's show through tears? 

Alas ! but homesick children we, 

Who would, but cannot, play the while 

We dream of nobler heritage, 

Our Father's house, our Father's smile." 

At last the end came. The end comes for 
every earthly friendship. The sweetest life to- 
gether of loved ones must have its last walk, 
its last talk, its last hand-clasp, when one goes, 
and the other stays. One of every two friends 
must stand by the other's grave, and drop tears 
all the hotter because they are shed alone. 

The friendship of Jesus with his disciples 
was very sweet ; it was the sweetest friend- 
ship this world ever knew, for never was there 

208 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO L/IS FRIENDS. 209 

any other heart with such capacity for loving 
and for kindling love as the heart of Jesus. 
But even this holy friendship in its earthly 
duration was but for a time. Jesus' hour came 
at last. To-morrow he was going back to his 
Father. 

Very tender was the farewell. The place 
chosen for it was the upper room — almost 
certainly in the house of Mary, the mother of 
John Mark. So full is the narrative of the 
evangelists that we can follow it through its 
minutest details. In the afternoon two of the 
closest friends of Jesus came quietly into the 
city from Bethany to find a room, and pre- 
pare for the Passover. All was done with 
the utmost secrecy. No inquiry was made 
for a room ; but a man appeared at a certain 
point, bearing a pitcher of water, — a most 
unusual occurrence, — and the messengers 
silently followed him, and thus were led to 
the house in which was the guest-chamber 
which Jesus and his friends were to use. 
There the two disciples made the preparations 
necessary for the Passover. 



2IO THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

Toward the evening Jesus and the other 
apostles came, and found their way to the 
upper room. First there was the Passover 
feast, observed after the manner of the Jews. 
Then followed the institution of the new 
memorial — the Lord's Supper. This brought 
the Master and his disciples together in very 
sacred closeness. Judas, the one discordant 
element in the communion, had gone out, 
and all who remained were of one mind and 
one heart. Then began the real farewell. 
Jesus was going away, and he longed to be 
remembered. This was a wonderfully human 
desire. No one wishes to be forgotten. No 
thought could be sadder than that one might 
not be remembered after he is gone, that in 
no heart his name shall be cherished, that 
nowhere any memento of him shall be pre- 
served. We all hope to live in the love of 
our friends long after our faces have vanished 
from earth. The deeper and purer our love 
may have been, and the closer our friendship, 
the more do we long to keep our place in the 
hearts of those we have loved. 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 211 

There are many ways in which men seek 
to keep their memory alive in the world. 
Some build their own tomb : few things are 
more pathetic than such planning for earthly 
immortality. Some seek to do deeds which 
will live in history. Some embalm their 
names in books, hoping thus to perpetuate 
them. Love's enshrining is the best way. 

The institution of the Last Supper showed 
the craving of the heart of Jesus to be remem- 
bered. " Do not forget me when I am gone," 
he said. That he might not be forgotten, he 
took bread and wine, and, breaking the one 
and pouring out the other, he gave them to 
his friends as mementos of himself. He as- 
sociated this farewell meal with the great acts 
of his redeeming love. "This bread which I 
break, let it be the emblem of my body broken 
to be bread for the world. This wine which 
I empty out, let it be the emblem of my 
blood which I give for you." Whatever else 
the Lord's Supper may mean, it is first of all 
a remembrancer ; it is the expression of the 
Master's desire to be remembered by his 



212 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

friends. It comes down to us — Christ's 
friends of to-day — with the same heart-craving. 
" Remember me ; do not forget me ; think of 
my love for you." Jesus' farewell was thus 
made wondrously sacred ; its memories have 
blessed the world ever since by their warmth 
and tenderness. No one can ever know the 
measure of the influence of that last night in 
the upper room upon the life of these nineteen 
Christian centuries. 

The Lord's Supper was not all of the Mas- 
ter's farewell. There were also words spoken 
which have been bread and wine, the body 
and blood of Jesus, to believers ever since. 
To the eleven men gathered about that table 
these words were inexpressibly precious. One 
of them, one who leaned his head upon the 
Master's breast that night, remembered them 
in his old age, and wrote them down, so that 
we can read them for ourselves. 

It is impossible in a short chapter to study 
the whole of this wonderful farewell address ; 
only a few of its great features can be gathered 
together. It began with an exhortation, a 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 213 

new commandment, — " That ye love one an- 
other." We cannot understand how really- 
new this commandment was when given to 
the Master's friends. The world had never 
before known such love as Jesus brought into 
its wintry atmosphere. He had lived out the 
divine love among men ; now his friends were 
to continue that love. " As I have loved you, 
that ye also love one another." Very imper- 
fectly have the friends of the Master learned 
that love ; yet wherever the gospel has gone, 
a wave of tenderness has rolled. 

Next was spoken a word of comfort whose 
music has been singing through the world ever 
since. " Let not your heart be troubled : ye 
believe in God, believe also in me." Unless it 
be the Twenty-Third Psalm, no other passage 
in all the Bible has had such a ministry of 
comfort as the first words of the fourteenth 
chapter of St. John's Gospel. They told the 
sorrowing disciples that their Master would 
not forget them, that his work for them would 
not be broken off by his death, that he 
was only going away to prepare a place for 



214 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS, 

them, and would come again to receive them 
unto himself, so that where he should be they 
might be also. He assured them, too, that 
while he was going away, something better 
than his bodily presence would be given them 
instead, — another Comforter would come, so 
that they should not be left orphans. 

Part of the Master's farewell words were 
answers to questions which his friends asked 
him, — a series of conversations with one and 
another. These men had their difficulties ; 
and they brought these to Jesus, and he ex- 
plained them. First, Peter had a question. 
Jesus had spoken of going away. Peter asked 
him, " Lord, whither goest thou ? " Jesus told 
him that where he was going he could not 
follow him then, but he should follow him 
by and by. Peter was recklessly bold, and 
he would not have it said that there was any 
place he could not follow his Master. He 
declared that he would even lay down his life 
for his sake. " Wilt thou lay down thy life for 
my sake?" answered the Master. "Wilt thou, 
indeed?" Then he foretold Peter's sad, hu- 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 21 5 

miliating fall — that, instead of laying down 
his life for his Lord. 

After the words had been spoken about 
the Father's house and the coming again of 
Jesus for his friends, Thomas had a question. 
Jesus had said, " Whither I go ye know, and 
the way ye know." Thomas was slow in his 
perceptions, and was given to questioning. He 
would take nothing for granted. He would 
not believe until he could understand. " Lord, 
we know not whither thou goest ; and how 
can we know the way ? " We are glad Thomas 
asked such a question, for it brought a won- 
derful answer. Jesus himself is the way and 
the truth and the life. That is, to know 
Christ is to know all that we need to know 
about heaven and the way there ; to have 
Christ as Saviour, Friend, and Lord, is to be 
led by him through the darkest way — home. 
Not only is he the door or gate which opens 
into the way, but he is the way. He is the 
guide in the way ; he has gone over it him- 
self ; everywhere we find his footprints. More 
than that ; he is the very way itself, and the 



2l6 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

very truth about the way, and the life which 
inspires us in the way. To be his friend is 
enough ; we need ask neither whither he has 
gone, nor the road : we need only abide in 
him. 

" Thank God, thank God, the Man is found, 
Sure-footed, knowing well the ground. 
He knows the road, for this the way" 
He travelled once, as on this day. 
He is our Messenger beside, 
He is our Door and Path and Guide." 

Then Philip had a question. He had heard 
the Master's reply to Thomas. Philip was 
slow and dull, loyal-hearted, a man of practical 
common-sense, but without imagination, una- 
ble to understand anything spiritual, anything 
but bare, cold, material facts. The words of 
Jesus about knowing and seeing the Father 
caught his ear. That was just what he wanted, 

— to see the Father. So in his dulness he 
said, "Lord, show us the Father, and it suf- 
ficeth us." He was thinking of a theophany, 

— a glorious vision of God. Jesus was won- 
drously patient with the dulness of his disci- 
ples ; but this word pained him, for it showed 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 21 7 

how little Philip had learned after all his three 
years of discipleship. " Have I been so long 
time with you, and yet hast thou not known 
me ? " Then Jesus told him that he had been 
showing him the Father, the very thing Philip 
craved, all the while. 

Jesus went on with his gracious words for 
a little while, and was speaking of manifest- 
ing himself to his disciples, when he was in- 
terrupted by another question. This time it 
was Judas who spoke. " Not Iscariot," St. 
John is careful to say, for the name of Iscariot 
was now blotted with the blotch of treason. 
He had gone out into the night, and was of 
the disciple family no more. Judas could not 
understand in what special and exclusive man- 
ner Jesus would manifest himself to his own. 
Perhaps he expected some setting apart of 
Christ's followers like that which had fenced 
off Israel from the other nations. But Jesus 
swept away his disciple's thought of any nar- 
row manifestation. There was only one con- 
dition — love. To every one who loved him 
and obeyed his words he would reveal himself. 



21 8 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

The manifesting would not be any theophany, 
as in the ancient Shekinah, but the spiritual 
in-dwelling of God. 

After these questions of his disciples had 
all been answered, Jesus continued his fare- 
well words. He left several bequests to his 
friends, distributing among them his posses- 
sions. We are apt to ask what he had to 
leave. He had no houses or lands, no gold 
or silver. While he was on his cross the 
soldiers divided his clothes among themselves. 
Yet there are real possessions besides money 
and estates. One may have won the honor 
of a noble name, and may bequeath this to 
his family when he goes away. One may 
have acquired power which he may transmit. 
It seemed that night in the upper room as 
if Jesus had neither name nor power to leave 
to his friends. To-morrow he was going to 
a cross, and that would be the end of every- 
thing of hope or beauty in his life. 

Yet he quietly made his bequests, fully 
conscious that he had great possessions, which 
would bless the world infinitely more than if 



JESUS 1 FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 219 

he had left any earthly treasure. One of 
these bequests was his peace. " Peace I leave 
with you ; my peace I give unto you." It 
was his own peace ; if it had not been his 
own he could not have bequeathed it to his 
friends. A man cannot give to others what 
he has not himself. It was his own because 
he had won it. Peace is not merely ease, 
the absence of strife and struggle; it is some- 
thing which lives in the midst of the fiercest 
strife and the sorest struggle. Jesus knew 
not the world's peace, — ease and quiet ; but 
he had learned a secret of heart-quietness 
which the world at its worst could not dis- 
turb. This peace he left to his disciples, 
and it made them richer than if he had 
given them all the world's wealth. 

Another of his possessions which he be- 
queathed was his joy. We think of Jesus as 
the Man of sorrows, and we ask what joy he 
had to give. It seemed a strange time, too, 
for him to be speaking of his joy ; for in an- 
other hour he was in the midst of the Geth- 
semane anguish, and to-morrow he was on 



220 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

his cross. Yet in the upper room he had 
in his heart a most blessed joy. Even in 
the terrible hours that came afterwards, that 
joy was not quenched ; for we are told that 
for the joy set before him he endured the 
cross, despising the shame. This joy also he 
bequeathed to his friends. " These things 
have I spoken unto you, that my joy may 
be in you." We remember, too, that they 
really received this legacy. The world won- 
dered at the strange secret of joy those men 
had when they went out into the world. They 
sang songs in the darkest night. Their faces 
shone as with a holy inner light in the deep- 
est sorrow. Christ's joy was fulfilled in them. 
He also put within the reach of his friends, 
as he was about to leave them, the whole of 
his own inheritance as the only begotten 
Son of God. He gave into their hands the 
key of heaven. He told them they should 
have power to do the works which they had 
seen him do, and even greater works than 
these. He told them that whatsoever they 
should ask the Father in his name the Father 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 221 

would give to them. The whole power of 
his name should thus be theirs, and they 
might use it as they would. Nothing they 
might ask should be refused to them ; all 
the heavenly kingdom was thrown open to 
them. 

These are mere suggestions of the fare- 
well gifts which Jesus left to his friends when 
he went away, — his peace, his joy, the key 
to all the treasures of his kingdom. He had 
blessed them in wonderful ways during his 
life ; but the best and richest things of his 
love were kept to the last, and given only 
after he was gone. Indeed, the best things 
were given through his death, and could be 
given in no other way. Other men live to 
do good ; they hasten to finish their work 
before their sun sets. God's plan for them is 
something they must do before death comes 
to write " Finis " at the end of their days. 
But the plan of God for Jesus centred in 
his death. It was the blessings that would 
come through his dying that were set forth 
in the elements used in the Last Supper, — 



222 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

the body broken, the blood shed. The great 
gifts to his friends, of which he spoke in his 
farewell words, would come through his dying. 
He must be lifted up in order to draw all 
men to him. He must shed his blood in 
order that remission of sins might be offered. 
It was expedient for him to go away in order 
that the Comforter might come. His peace 
and his joy were bequests which could be 
given only when he had died as the world's 
Redeemer. His name would have power to 
open heaven's treasures only when the atone- 
ment had been made, and the Intercessor was 
at God's right hand in heaven. 

There was one other act in this farewell of 
Jesus. After he had ended his gracious words, 
he lifted up his eyes in prayer to his Father. 
The pleading is full of deep and tender affec- 
tion. It is like that of a mother about to go 
away from earth, and who is commending her 
children to the care of the heavenly Father, 
when she must leave them without mother-love 
and mother-shelter among unknown and dan- 
gerous enemies. 



JESUS 7 FAREWELL TO BIS FRIENDS. 223 

Every word of the wonderful prayer throbs 
with love, and reveals a heart of most tender 
affection. While he had been with his friends, 
Jesus had kept them in the shelter of his own 
divine strength. None of them had been lost, 
so faithful had been his guardianship over 
them — none but the son of perdition. He, 
too, had received faithful care ; it had not 
been the Good Shepherd's fault that he had 
perished. He had been lost because he re- 
sisted the divine love, and would not accept 
the divine will. There must have been a pang 
of anguish in the heart of Jesus as he spoke to 
his Father of the one who had perished. But 
the others all were safe. Jesus had guarded 
them through all the dangers up to the present 
moment. 

But now he is about to leave them. He 
knows that they must encounter great dangers, 
and will not have him to protect them. The 
form of his intercession for them is worthy of 
note. He does not ask that they should be 
taken out of the world. This would have 
seemed the way of tenderest love. But it is 



224 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

not the divine way to take us out of the battle. 
These friends of Jesus had been trained to 
be his witnesses, to represent him when he 
had gone away. Therefore they must stay in 
the world, whatever the dangers might be. 
The prayer was that they should be kept from 
the evil. There is but one evil. They were 
not to be kept from persecution, from earthly 
suffering and loss, from pain or sorrow : these 
are not the evils from which men's lives need 
to be guarded. The only real evil is sin. Our 
danger in trouble or adversity is not that we 
may suffer, but that we may sin. The plead- 
ing of Jesus was that his friends might not be 
hurt in their souls, in their spiritual life, by 
sin. 

If enemies wrong or injure us, the peril is 
not that they may cause us to suffer injustice, 
but that in our suffering we may lose the love 
out of our heart, and grow angry, or become 
bitter. In time of sickness, trial, or bereave- 
ment, that which we should fear is not the ill- 
ness or the sorrow, but that we shall not keep 
sweet, with the peace of God in our breast. 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 225 

The only thing that can do us real harm is sin. 
So the intercession on our behalf ever is, not 
that we may be kept from things that are hard, 
from experiences that are costly or painful, but 
that we may be kept pure, gentle, and submis- 
sive, with peace and joy in our heart. 

There was a pleading also that the disciples 
might be led into complete consecration of 
spirit, and that they might be prepared to go 
out for their Master, to be to the world what 
he had been to them. This was not a prayer 
for a path of roses ; rather it was for a cross, 
the utter devotion of their lives to God. Be- 
fore the prayer closed, a final wish for his 
friends was expressed, — that when their work 
on earth was done, they might be received 
home; that where he should be they might 
be also, to behold his glory. 

Surely there never has been on earth another 
gathering of such wondrously deep and sacred 
meaning as that farewell meeting in the upper 
room. There the friendship of Jesus and his 
chosen ones reached its holiest experience. 
His deep human love appears in his giving 



226 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

up the whole of this last evening to this tryst 
with his own. He knew what was before him 
after midnight, — the bitter agony of Geth- 
semane, the betrayal, the arrest, the trial, and 
then the terrible shame and suffering of to- 
morrow. But he planned so that there should 
be these quiet, uninterrupted hours alone with 
his friends, before the beginning of the experi- 
ences of his passion. He did it for his own 
sake ; his heart hungered for communion 
with his friends ; with desire he desired to 
eat the Passover, and enjoy these hours with 
them before he suffered. We may be sure, too, 
that he received from the holy fellowship com- 
fort and strength, which helped him in passing 
through the bitter hours that followed. Then, 
he did it also for the sake of his disciples. He 
knew how their hearts would be broken with 
sorrow when he was taken from them, and 
he wished to comfort them and make them 
stronger for the way. The memory of those 
holy hours hung over them like a star in all 
the dark night of their sorrow, and was a bene- 
diction to them as long as they lived. 



JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS. 227 

Then, who can tell what blessings have gone 
out from that farewell into the whole Church 
of Christ through all the centuries ? It is the 
holy of holies of Christian history. The Lord's 
Supper, instituted that night, and which has 
never ceased to be observed as a memorial of the 
Master's wonderful love and great sacrifice, has 
sweetened the world with its fragrant memo- 
ries. The words spoken by the Master at the 
table have been repeated from lip to heart wher- 
ever the story of the gospel has gone, and 
have given unspeakable comfort to millions of 
hearts. The petitions of the great intercessory 
prayer have been rising continually, like holy 
incense, ever since they were first uttered, tak- 
ing into their clasp each new generation of be- 
lievers. This farewell has kept the Christian 
hearts of all the centuries warm and tender 
with love toward him who is the unchanging 
Friend the same yesterday and to-day and for- 
ever. 



CHAPTER XIV 

JESUS' FRIENDSHIPS AFTER HE AROSE. 

" Our own are our own forever — God taketh not back his gift ; 
They may pass beyond our vision, but our soul shall find 
them out 
When the waiting is all accomplished, and the deathly shadows 
lift, 
And the glory is given for grieving, and the surety of God 
for doubt." 

We cannot but ask questions about the after 
life. What is its character? What shall be 
the relations there of those who in the present 
life have been united in friendship ? What ef- 
fect has dying on the human affections ? Does 
it dissolve. the bonds which here have been 
so strong ? Or do friendships go on through 
death, interrupted for a little time only, to be 
taken up again in the life beyond ? Surely 
God will not blame us for our eagerness to 
know all we can learn about the world to 
which we are going. 

228 



AFTER HE AROSE. 22<) 

True, we cannot learn much about this 
blessed life while we stay in this world. Hu- 
man eyes cannot penetrate into the deep mys- 
tery. We are like men standing on the shore 
of a great sea, wondering what lies on the 
other side. No one has come back to tell 
us what he found in that far country. We 
bring our questions to the word of God, but 
it avails little ; even inspiration does not give 
us explicit revealings concerning the life of 
the blessed. We know that the Son of God 
had dwelt forever in heaven before his incar- 
nation, and we expect that he will shed light 
upon the subject of life within the gates of 
heaven. But he is almost silent to our ques- 
tions. Indeed, he seems to tell us really noth- 
ing. He gives us no description of the place 
from which he came, to which he returned, 
and to which he said his disciples shall be 
gathered. He says nothing about the occu- 
pations of those who dwell there. He satis- 
fies no human yearnings to know the nature 
of friendship after death. We are likely to 
turn away from our quest for definite knowl- 



230 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

edge, feeling that even Jesus has told us noth- 
ing. Yet he has told us a great deal. 

There is one wonderful revelation of which 
perhaps too little has been made. After Jesus 
had died, and lain in the grave for three days, 
he rose again, and remained for forty days 
upon the earth. During that time -he did not 
resume the old relations. He was not with 
his disciples as he had been during the three 
years of his public ministry, journeying with 
them, speaking to them, working miracles ; 
yet he showed himself to them a number of 
times. 

The remarkable thing in these appearances 
of Jesus during the forty days is that we 
see in him one beyond death. Lazarus was 
brought back to earth after having died, but 
it was only the old life to which he returned. 
The human relations between him and his sis- 
ters and friends were restored, but probably 
they were not different from what they had 
been in the past. Lazarus was the same 
mortal being as before, with human frailties 
and infirmities. 



AFTER HE AROSE. 23 1 

Jesus, however, after his return from the 
grave, was a man beyond death. He was the 
same person who had lived and died, and yet 
he was changed. He appeared and disap- 
peared at will. He entered rooms through 
closed and barred doors. At last his body 
ascended from the earth, and passed up to 
heaven, subject no longer to the laws of grav- 
itation. We see in Jesus, therefore, during 
the forty days, one who has passed into what 
we call the other life. What he was then 
his people will be when they have emerged 
from death with their spiritual bodies, for he 
was the first-fruits of them that are asleep. 

As we study Jesus in the story of those 
days, we are surprised to see how little he was 
changed. Death had left no strange marks 
upon him. Nothing beautiful in his life had 
been lost in the grave. He came back from 
the shadows as human as he was before he 
entered the valley. Dying had robbed him 
of no human tenderness, no gentle grace of 
disposition, no charm of manner. As we 
watch him in his intercourse with his disciples, 



232 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

we recognize the familiar traits which belonged 
to his personality during the three years of 
his active ministry. 

We may rightly infer that in our new life 
we shall be as little changed as Jesus was. 
We shall lose our sin, our frailties and in- 
firmities, all our blemishes and faults. The 
long-hindered and hampered powers of our be- 
ing shall be liberated. Hidden beauties shall 
shine out in our character, as developed pic- 
tures in the photographer's sensitized plate. 
There will be great changes in us in these 
and other regards, but our personality will 
be the same. Jesus was easily recognized by 
his friends ; so shall we be by those who have 
known us. Whatever is beautiful and good 
in us here, — the fruits of spiritual conquest, 
the lessons learned in earth's experiences, the 
impressions made upon us by the Word of 
God, the silver and golden threads woven in 
our life-web by pure friendships, the effects 
of sorrow upon us, the work wrought in us 
by the Holy Spirit, — all this shall appear in 
our new life. We shall have incorruptible, 



AFTER HE AROSE. 233 

spiritual, and glorious bodies, no longer mortal 
and subject to the limitations of matter; death 
will rob us of nothing that is worthy and true, 
and fit for the blessed life. 

"We are quite sure 
That he will give them back — 
Bright, pure, and beautiful. 



He does not mean — though heaven be fair — 

To change the spirits entering there 

That they forget 

The eyes upraised and wet, 

The lips too still for prayer, 

The mute despair. 

He will not take 

The spirits which he gave, and make 

The glorified so new 

That they are lost to me and you. 

I do believe that just the same sweet face, 
But glorified, is waiting in the place 
Where we shall meet. 

God never made 

Spirit for spirit, answering shade for shade, 

And placed them side by side — 

So wrought in one, though separate, mystified, 

And meant to break 

The quivering threads between.' ■ 



234 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

It is interesting, too, to study the friendships 
of Jesus after he came from the grave. He 
did not take up again the public life of the 
days before his death. He made no more 
journeys through the country. He spoke no 
more to throngs in the temple courts or by 
the seaside. He no more went about healing, 
teaching, casting out demons, and raising the 
dead. He made no appearances in public. 
Only his disciples saw him. We have but 
few details of his intercourse with individuals, 
but such glimpses as we have are exceedingly 
interesting. They show us that no tender tie 
of friendship had been hurt by his experience 
of dying. The love of his heart lived on 
through death, and reappeared during the forty 
days in undiminished gentleness and kindness. 
He did not meet his old friends as strangers, 
but as one who had been away for a few days, 
and had come again. 

The first of his friends to whom he showed 
himself after he arose was Mary Magdalene. 
Her story is pathetic in its interest. The 
traditions of the centuries have blotted her 



AFTER HE AROSE. 235 

name, but there is not the slightest evidence 
in the New Testament that she was ever a 
woman of blemished character. There is no 
reason whatever for identifying her with the 
woman that was a sinner, who came to Jesus 
in Simon's house. All that is said of Mary's 
former condition is that she was possessed of 
seven demons, and that Jesus freed her from 
this terrible bondage. In gratitude for this 
unspeakable deliverance Mary followed Jesus, 
leaving her home, and going with him until 
the day of his death. She was one of several 
women friends who accompanied him and 
ministered to him of their substance. 

Mary's devotion to Jesus was wonderful. 
When the tomb was closed she was one of the 
watchers who lingered, loath to leave it. Then, 
at the dawn of the first day morning she was 
again one of those who hurried through the 
darkness to the tomb, with spices for the 
anointing of the body — last at his cross, and 
earliest at his tomb. Mary's devotion was 
rewarded ; for to her first of all his friends 
did Jesus appear, as she stood weeping by the 



236 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

empty grave. She did not recognize him at 
once. She was not expecting to see him 
risen. Then, her eyes were blinded with her 
tears. But the moment he spoke her name, 
"Mary," she knew him, and answered, "Rab- 
boni." He was not changed to her. He had 
not forgotten her. The love in his' heart had 
lost none of its tenderness. He was as ac- 
cessible as ever. Dying had made him no 
less a friend, and no less sympathetic, than 
he was before he died. 

Soon after Mary had met Jesus, and re- 
joiced to find him her friend just as of old, 
he appeared to the other women of the com- 
pany who had followed him with their grate- 
ful ministries. They also knew him, and he 
knew them ; and their hearts suffered no 
wrench at the meeting, for they found the 
same sweet friendship they thought they had 
lost, just as warm and tender as ever. 

That same day Jesus appeared to Peter. A 
veil is drawn by the evangelists over the cir- 
cumstances of this meeting. The friendship 
of Jesus and Peter had continued for three 



AFTER HE AROSE. 2tf 

years. He had often given his Master pain 
and trouble through his impulsive ways. But 
the culmination of it all came on the night of 
the betrayal, when, in the hall of the high 
priest's palace, Peter denied being a disciple 
of Jesus, denied even knowing him. While 
for the third time the base and cowardly words 
were on his lips, Jesus turned and looked upon 
his faithless disciple with a look of grieved 
love, and then Peter remembered the forewarn- 
ing the Master had given him. His heart was 
broken with penitence, and he went out and 
wept bitterly. But he had no opportunity to 
seek forgiveness ; for the next morning Jesus 
was on his cross, and in the evening was in 
his grave. Peter's sorrow was very deep, for 
his love for his Master was very strong. 

We can imagine that when the truth of the 
resurrection began to be believed that morn- 
ing, Peter wondered how Jesus would receive 
him. But he was not long kept in suspense. 
The women who came first to the tomb, to find 
it empty, received a message for " the disciples 
and Peter." This singling out of his name 



238 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

for special mention must have given unspeak- 
able joy to Peter. It told him that the love 
of Jesus was not only stronger than death, 
but also stronger than sin. Then, sometime 
during the day, Jesus appeared to Peter alone. 
No doubt then, in the sacredness of love, the 
disciple made confession, and the Master 
granted forgiveness. Several times during 
the forty days Jesus and Peter met again. 
The friendship had not been marred by death. 
The risen Lord loved just as he had loved in 
the days of common human intercourse. 

One of the most interesting of the after 
resurrection incidents is that of the walk to 
Emmaus. Cleophas and his friend were jour- 
neying homeward with sad hearts, when a 
stranger joined them. His conversation was 
wonderfully tender as he walked with them 
and explained the Scriptures. Then followed 
the evening meal, and the revealing of the 
risen Jesus in the breaking of bread. Again 
it was the same sweet friendship which had 
so warmed their hearts in the past, resumed 
by the Master on the other side of death. 



AFTER HE AROSE, 239 

It was tne same with all the recorded appear- 
ances of Jesus Those who had been his 
friends previous to his death found him the 
same friend as before. He took up with each 
of them the threads of affection just where 
they had been dropped when the betrayal and 
arrest wrought such panic among his disciples, 
scattering them away, and went on with the 
weaving. 

May we not conclude that it will be with us 
even as it was with Jesus? His resurrection 
was not only a pledge of what that of believ- 
ers will be, carrying within itself the seed and 
potency of a blessed immortality, but it was 
also a sample of what ours will be. Death will 
produce far less change in us than we imagine 
it will do. We shall go on with living very 
much as if nothing had happened. Dying is 
an experience we need not trouble ourselves 
about very much if we are believers in Christ. 
There is a mystery in it ; but when we have 
passed through it we shall probably find that 
it is a very simple and natural event — perhaps 
little more serious than sleeping over night 



24O THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

and waking in the morning. It will not hurt 
us in any way. It will blot no lovely thing 
from our life. It will end nothing that is 
worth while. Death is only a process in life, 
a phase of development, analogous to that 
which takes place when a seed is dropped in 
the earth and comes up a beautiful plant, 
adorned with foliage and blossoms. Life 
would be incomplete without dying. The 
greatest misfortune that could befall any one 
would be that he should not die. This would 
be an arresting of development which would 
be death indeed. 

"Death is the crown of life; 
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain; 
Were death denied, to live would not be life; 
Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die. 
Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign; 
Spring from our fetters; hasten to the skies, 
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. 
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost; 
The king of terrors is the prince of peace.' ' 

There is need for a reconstruction of the 
prevalent thoughts and conceptions of heaven. 
We have trained ourselves to think of life 



AFTER HE AROSE. 24 1 

beyond the grave as something altogether dif- 
ferent from what life is in this world. It has 
always been pictured thus to us. We have 
been taught that heaven is a place of rest, a 
place of fellowship with God, a place of cease- 
less praise. The human element has been 
largely left out of our usual conceptions of 
the blessed life. Not much is made of the 
relations of believers to one another. That 
which is emphasized in Christian hymns and 
in most books about heaven is the Godward 
side. Much is made of the glory of the place 
as suggested by the visions of St. John in 
the Apocalypse. In many of these concep- 
tions the chief thought of heavenly blessed- 
ness is that it is a release from earth and 
from earthly conditions. There is no sorrow, 
no trouble, no pain, no struggle, no toil, in 
the home to which we are going. We shall 
sit on the green banks of beautiful rivers, 
amid unfading flowers, and sing forever. We 
shall lie prostrate before the throne, and gaze 
and gaze on the face of God. 

But this is not the kind of heaven and 



242 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

heavenly life which the teachings of Jesus 
would lead us to imagine. True, he speaks of 
the place to which he is going, and where, 
by and by, he would gather all his disciples, 
as "my Father's house. ,, This suggests home 
and love ; and the thought is in harmony with 
what we have seen in the life of Jesus dur- 
ing the forty days, — the continuance of the 
friendships formed and knit in earthly fellow- 
ships. But the vision of home life thus sug- 
gested need not imply a heaven of inaction. 
Indeed, no life could be more natural and 
beautiful than that which the thought of home 
suggests. We have no perfect homes on 
earth ; but every true home has in it fragments 
of heaven's meaning, and always the idea is of 
love's service rather than of blissful indolence. 
We may get many thoughts of the heavenly 
life from other teachings of Jesus. Life is 
continuous. Whosoever liveth and believeth 
shall never die. There is no break, no inter- 
ruption of life, in what we call dying. We 
think of eternal life as the life of heaven, the 
glorified life. So it is ; but we have its begin- 



AFTER HE AROSE. 243 

nings here. The moment we believe, we have 
everlasting life. The Christian graces we are 
enjoined to cultivate are heavenly lessons set 
for us to learn. If we would conceive of the 
life of heaven, we have but to think of ideal 
Christian life in this world, and then lift it 
up to its perfect realization. Heaven is but 
earth's lessons of grace better learned, earth's 
best spiritual life glorified. Therefore we get 
our truest thoughts of it from a study of 
Christ's ideal for the life of his followers, for 
it will simply be this life fully realized and 
infinitely extended. 

For example, the one great lesson set for 
us, the one which includes all others, is 
love. God is love, and we are to learn to love 
if we would be like him. All relationships 
are relationships of love. All graces are graces 
of love. All duties are parts of one great 
duty — to love one another. All worthy and 
noble character is love wrought out in life. 
All life here is a school, with its tasks, its 
struggles, its conflicts, its minglings with men, 
its friendships, its experiences of joy and sor- 



244 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

row, its burdens, its disappointments and 
hopes, and the final education to be attained 
is love. Browning puts it thus in " Rabbi Ben 
Ezra": — 

Our life, with all it yields of joy or woe, 
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, 
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
How love might be, hath been, indeed, and is. 

What is this love which it is the one great 
lesson of life to learn ? Toward God, it may- 
express itself in devotion, worship, praise, 
obedience, fellowship. This seems to be the 
chief thought of love in the common concep- 
tion of heaven. It is all adoration, glorifying. 
But love has a manward as well as a Godward 
development. St. John, the disciple of love, 
teaches very plainly that he who says he loves 
God must prove it by also loving man. If the 
whole of our training here is to be in loving 
and in* living out our love, we certainly have 
the clew to the heavenly life. We shall con- 
tinue in the doing of the things we have 
here learned to do. Life in glory will be 
earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. 



AFTER HE AROSE. 245 

Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. 
Inaction can never be a condition of blessed- 
ness for a life made and trained for action. 
The essential quality of love is service — "not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister ;" and 
for one who has learned love's lesson, happi- 
ness never can be found in a state in which 
there is no opportunity for ministering. In 
heaven it will still be more blessed to give 
than to receive ; and those who are first will 
be those who with lowly spirit serve most 
deeply. Heaven will be a place of boundless 
activity. "His servants shall serve him." 
The powers trained here for the work of Christ 
will find ample opportunity there for doing 
their best service. Said Victor Hugo in his 
old age, "When I go down to the grave, I 
can say, like so many others, 'I have finished 
my day's work ; ' but I cannot say, ' I have 
finished my life/ My day's work will begin 
again next morning. My tomb is not a blind 
alley, it is a thoroughfare ; it closes with the 
twilight to open with the dawn." 

Whatever mystery there may be concerning 



246 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

the life that believers in Christ shall live in 
heaven, we may be sure at least that they will 
carry with them all that is true and divine of 
their earthly life. The character formed here 
they will retain through death. The capacity 
they have gained by the use of their powers 
they will have for the beginning of their activ- 
ity in the new life. There can be no doubt 
that they shall find work commensurate with 
and fitted to their trained powers. 

So heaven will be a far more natural place 
than we imagine it will be. It will not be 
greatly unlike the ideal life of earth. We prob- 
ably shall be surprised when we meet each 
other to find how little we have changed. The 
old tenderness will not be missing. We shall 
recognize our friends by some little gentle 
ways they used to have here, or by some 
familiar thoughtfulness that was never want- 
ing in them. The friendships we began here, 
and had not time to cultivate, we shall have op- 
portunity there to renew, and carry on through 
immortal years. 

Even at the best, human friendships only 



AFTER HE AROSE. 247 

begin in this life ; in heaven they will reach 
their best and holiest possibilities. There are 
lives which only touch each other in this world 
and then separate, going their different ways 
— like ships that pass in the night. There 
will be time enough in heaven for any such 
faintest beginnings of friendship to be wrought 
out in beauty. Friendships with Jesus here 
touch but the shore of an infinite ocean ; in 
heaven, unhindered, in uninterrupted fellow- 
ship, we shall be forever learning more of 
this love of Christ which passeth knowledge. 



CHAPTER XV. 

JESUS AS A FRIEND. 

" Long, long centuries 
Agone, One walked the earth, his life 
A seeming failure ; 
Dying, he gave the world a gift 

That will outlast eternities." 

The world has always paid high honor to 
friendship. Some of the finest passages in 
all history are the stories of noble friendships, 
— stories which are among the classics of 
literature. The qualities which belong to an 
ideal friend have been treated by many writers 
through all the centuries. But Jesus Christ 
brought into the world new standards for 
everything in human life. He was the one 
complete Man, — God's ideal for humanity. 
" Once in the world's history was born a Man. 
Once in the roll of the ages, out of innumer- 
able failures, from the stock of human nature, 

248 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 249 

one bud developed itself into a faultless flower. 
One perfect specimen of humanity has God 
exhibited on earth. " To Jesus, therefore, we 
turn for the divine ideal of everything in hu- 
man life. What is friendship as interpreted by 
Jesus ? What are the qualities of a true friend 
as illustrated in the life of Jesus ? 

It is evident that he lifted the ideal of friend- 
ship to a height to which it never before had 
been exalted. He made all things new. Duty 
had a new meaning after Jesus taught and lived, 
and died and rose again. He presented among 
men new conceptions of life, new standards 
of character, new thoughts of what is worthy 
and beautiful. Not one of his beatitudes had 
a place among the world's ideals of blessed- 
ness. They all had an unworldly, a spiritual 
basis. The things he said that men should 
live for were not the things which men had 
been living for before he came. He showed 
new patterns for everything in life. 

Jesus presented a conception for friendship 
which surpassed all the classical models. In 
his farewell to his disciples he gave them what 



2 SO THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

he called a "new commandment." The com- 
mandment was that his friends should love 
one another. Why was this called a new 
commandment? Was there no commandment 
before Jesus came and gave it that good men 
should love one another? Was this rule of 
love altogether new with him ? 

In the form in which Jesus gave it, this 
commandment never had been given before. 
There was a precept in the Mosaic law which 
at first seems to be the same as that which 
Jesus gave, but it was not the same. It read, 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
"As thyself " was the standard. Men were to 
love themselves, and then love their neigh- 
bors as themselves. That was as far as the 
old commandment went. But the new com- 
mandment is altogether different. " As I have 
loved you" is its measure. How did Jesus 
love his disciples ? As himself ? Did he keep 
a careful balance all the while, thinking of 
himself, of his own comfort, his own ease, his 
own safety, and going just that far and no 
farther in his love for his disciples ? No ; it 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 2$l 

was a new pattern of love that Jesus intro- 
duced. He forgot himself altogether, denied 
himself, never saved his own life, never hesi- 
tated at any line or limit of service, of cost or 
sacrifice, in loving. He emptied himself, kept 
nothing back, spared not his own life. Thus 
the standard of friendship which Jesus set for 
his followers was indeed new. Instead of 
" Love thy neighbor as thyself," it was " Love 
as Jesus loved ; " and he loved unto the utter- 
most. 

When we turn to the history of Christianity, 
we see that the type of friendship which Jesus 
introduced was indeed a new thing in the 
world. It was new in its motive and inspira- 
tion. The love of the Mosaic law was inspired 
by Sinai ; the love of the Christian law got 
its inspiration from Calvary. The one was 
only cold, stern law ; the other was burning 
passion. The one was enforced merely as a 
duty ; the other was impressed by the wondrous 
love of Christ. No doubt men loved God in 
the Old Testament days, for there were many 
revealings of his goodness and his grace and 



252 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

love in the teachings of those who spoke for 
God to men. But wonderful as were these 
revelations, they could not for a moment 
be compared with the manifestation of God 
which was made in Jesus Christ. The Son of 
God came among men in human form, and in 
gentle and lowly life all the blessedness of the 
divine affection was poured out right before 
men's eyes. At last there was the cross, 
where the heart of God broke in love. 

No wonder that, with such inspiration, a 
new type of friendship appeared among the 
followers of Jesus. We are so familiar with 
the life which Christianity has produced, where 
the fruits of the Spirit have reached their finest 
and best development, that it is well-nigh im- 
possible for us to conceive of the condition of 
human society as it was before Christ came. 
Of course there was love in the world before 
that day. Parents loved their children. There 
was natural affection, which sometimes even 
in heathen countries was very strong and 
tender. Friendships existed between individ- 
uals. History has enshrined the story of some 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 2$$ 

of these. There always were beautiful things 
in humanity, — fragments of the divine image 
remaining among the ruins of the fall. 

But the mutual love of Christians which 
began to show itself on the day of Pentecost 
surpassed anything that had ever been known 
in even the most refined and gentle society. 
It was indeed divine love in new-born men. 
No mere natural human affection could ever 
produce such fellowship as we see in the pen- 
tecostal church. It was a little of heaven's 
life let down upon earth. Those who so 
loved one another were new men; they had 
been born again — born from above. Jesus 
came to establish the kingdom of heaven upon 
the earth. In other words, he came to make 
heaven in the hearts of his believing ones. That 
is what the new friendship is. A creed does 
not make one a Christian ; commandments, 
though spoken amid the thunders of Sinai, 
will never produce love in a life. The new 
ideal of love which Jesus came to introduce 
among men was the love of God shed abroad 
in human hearts. "As I have loved you, 



254 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

that ye also love one another " was the new 
requirement. 

Since, then, the new ideal of friendship is 
that which Jesus gave in his own life, it will 
be worth our while to make a study of this 
holy pattern, that we may know how to strive 
toward it for ourselves. 

We may note the tenderness of the friend- 
ship of Jesus. It has been suggested by an 
English preacher that Christ exhibited the 
blended qualities of both sexes. "There was 
in him the womanly heart as well as the manly 
brain." Yet tenderness is not exclusively a 
womanly excellence ; indeed, since tenderness 
can really coexist only with strength, it is in 
its highest manifestation quite as truly a manly 
as a womanly quality. Jesus was inimitably 
tender. Tenderness in him was never softness 
or weakness. It was more like true mother- 
liness than almost any other human affection ; 
it was infolding, protecting, nourishing love. 

We find abundant illustrations of this quality 
in the story of the life of Jesus. The most 
kindly and affectionate men are sure sometime 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 255 

to reveal at least a shade of harshness, cold- 
ness, bitterness, or severity. But in Jesus 
there was never any failure of tenderness. We 
see it in his warm love for John, in his regard 
for little children, in his compassion for sin- 
ners who came to his feet, in his weeping over 
the city which had rejected him and was about 
to crucify him, in his thought for the poor, in 
his compassion for the sick. 

Another quality of the friendship of Jesus 
was patience. In all his life he never once 
failed in this quality. We see it in his treat- 
ment of his disciples. They were slow learners. 
He had to teach the same lesson over and over 
again. They could not understand his charac- 
ter. But he wearied not in his teaching. 
They were unfaithful, too, in their friendship 
for him. In a time of alarm they all fled, 
while one of them denied him, and another 
betrayed him. But never once was there the 
slightest impatience shown by him. Having 
loved his own, he loved them unto the utter- 
most, through all dulness and all unfaithful- 
ness. He suffered unjustly, but bore all wrong 



256 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

in silence. He never lost his temper. He 
never grew discouraged, though all his work 
seemed to be in vain. He never despaired of 
making beauty out of deformity in his disci- 
ples. He never lost hope of any soul. Had 
it not been for this quality of unwearying 
patience nothing would ever have come from 
his interest in human lives. 

The friendship of Jesus was unselfish. He 
did not choose those whose names would add 
to his influence, who would help him to rise 
to honor and renown ; he chose lowly, un- 
known men, whom he could lift up to worthy 
character. His enemies charged against him 
that he was the friend of publicans and sinners. 
In a sense this was true. He came to be a 
Saviour of lost men. He said he was a physi- 
cian ; and a physician's mission is among the 
sick, not among the whole and well. 

The friendship of Jesus was not checked 
or foiled by the discovery of faults or blemishes 
in those whom he had taken into his life. 
Even in our ordinary human relations we do 
not know what we are engaging to do when 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 2 57 

we become the friend of another. " For better 
for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and 
in health," runs the marriage covenant. The 
covenant in all true friendship is the same. 
We pledge our friend faithfulness, with all that 
faithfulness includes. We know not what de- 
mands upon us this sacred compact may make 
in years to come. Misfortune may befall 
our friend, and he may require our aid in 
many ways. Instead of being a help he may 
become a burden. But friendship must not 
fail, whatever its cost may be. When we 
become the friend of another we do not know 
what faults and follies in him closer acquaint- 
ance may disclose to our eyes. But here, 
again, ideal friendship must not fail. 

What is true in common human relations 
was true in a far more wonderful way of the 
friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall 
the story of his three years with his disciples. 
They gave him at the best a very feeble re- 
turn for his great love for them. They were 
inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They 
showed personal ambition, striving for first 



258 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

places, even at the Last Supper. They dis- 
played jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, 
unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things 
appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his 
friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. 
He had taken them as his friends, and he 
trusted them wholly ; he committed himself to 
them absolutely, without reserve, without con- 
dition, without the possibility of withdrawal. 
No matter how they failed, he loved them still. 
He was patient with their weaknesses and 
with their slow growth, and was not afraid to 
wait, knowing that in the end they would 
justify his faith in them and his costly friend- 
ship for them. 

Jesus thought not of the present comfort 
and pleasure of his friends, but of their high- 
est and best good. Too often human friend- 
ship in its most generous and lavish kindness 
is really most unkind. It thinks that its first 
duty is to give relief from pain, to lighten 
burdens, to alleviate hardship, to smoothe the 
rough path. Too often serious hurt is done by 
this over-tenderness of human love. 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 2 59 

But Jesus made no such mistakes in dealing 
with his friends. He did not try to make life 
easy for them. He did not pamper them. He 
never lowered the conditions of discipleship 
so that it would be easy for them to follow 
him. He did not carry their burdens for 
them, but put into their hearts courage and 
hope to inspire and strengthen them to carry 
their own loads. 

He did not keep them secluded from the 
world in a quiet shelter so that they would 
not come in contact with the worlds evil nor 
meet its assaults ; his method with them was 
to teach them how to live so that they should 
have the divine protection in the midst of 
spiritual danger, and then to send them forth 
to face the perils and fight the battles. His 
prayer for his disciples was not that they 
should be taken out of the world, thus escap- 
ing its dangers and getting away from its 
struggles, but that they should be kept from 
the world's evil. He knew that if they would 
become good soldiers they must be trained in 
the midst of the conflict. Hence he did not 



26o THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

fight their battles for them. He did not save 
Peter from being sifted ; it was necessary 
that his apostle should pass through the ter- 
rible experience, even though he should fail 
in it and fall. His prayer for him was not 
that he should not be sifted, but that his faith 
should not altogether fail. His aim in all his 
dealings with his friends was to train them into 
heroic courage and invincible character, and 
not to lead them along flowery paths through 
gardens of ease. 

We are in the habit of saying that the fol- 
lower of Christ will always find goodness and 
mercy wherever he is led. This is true ; but 
it must not be understood to mean that there 
will never be any hardness to endure, any 
cross to bear, any pain or loss to experience. 
We grow best under burdens. We learn most 
when lessons are hard. When we get through 
this earthly life, and stand on the other side, 
and can look back on the path over which we 
have been led, it will appear that we have 
found our best blessings where we thought the 
way was most dreary and desolate. We shall 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 26 1 

see then that what seemed sternness and se- 
verity in Christ was really truest and wisest 
friendship. One writes : — 

"If you could go back to the forks of the road — 
Back the long miles you have carried the load; 
Back to the place where you had to decide 
By this way or that through your life to abide; 

Back of the sorrow and back of the care ; 

Back to the place where the future was fair — 

If you were there now, a decision to make, 

Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take? 

Then, after you'd trodden the other long track, 
Suppose that again to the forks you went back, 
After you found that its promises fair 
Were but a delusion that led to a snare — 

That the road you first travelled with sighs and unrest, 
Though dreary and rough, was most graciously blest, 
With a balm for each bruise and a charm for each ache, 
Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?" 

Sometimes good people are disappointed in 
the way their prayers are answered. Indeed, 
they seem not to be answered at all. They 
ask God to take away some trouble, to lift off 
some load, and their request is not granted. 
They continue to pray, for they read that we 



262 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

must be importunate, that men ought always 
to pray and not to faint ; but still there seems 
no answer. Then they are perplexed. They 
cannot understand why God's promises have 
failed. 

But they have only misread the promises. 
There is no assurance given that the burdens 
shall be lifted off and carried for us. God 
would not be the wise, good, and loving Father 
he is, if at every cry of any of his children 
he ran to take away the trouble, or free them 
from the hardness, or make all things easy 
and pleasant for them. Such a course would 
keep us always children, untrained, undisci- 
plined. Only in burden-bearing and in endur- 
ing can we learn to be self-reliant and strong. 
Jesus himself was trained on the battlefield, 
and in life's actual experiences of trial. He 
learned obedience by the things that he suf- 
fered. It was by meeting temptation and by 
being victorious in it that he became Master 
of the world, able to deliver us in all our 
temptations. 

Not otherwise can we grow into Christlike 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 263 

men. It would be unkindness in our Father 
to save us from the experiences by which alone 
we can be disciplined into robust and vigorous 
strength. The promises do not read that if 
we call upon God in our trouble he will take 
the trouble away. Rather the assurance is 
that if we call upon God he will answer us. 
The answer may not be relief ; it may be 
only cheer. We are taught to cast our burden 
upon the Lord, but we are not told that the 
Lord will take it away. The promise is that 
he will sustain us under the burden. We are 
to continue to bear it ; and we are assured that 
we shall not faint under the load, for God 
will strengthen us. The assurance is not that 
we shall not be tempted, but that no tempta- 
tion but such as man can bear shall come to 
us, and that the faithful God will not suffer us 
to be tempted above that we are able to 
endure. 

This, then, is what divine friendship does. 
It does not make it easy for us to live, for 
then we should get no blessing of strength 
and goodness from living. How, then, are our 



264 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

prayers answered ? God sustains us so that we 
faint not ; and then, as we endure in faith and 
patience, his benediction is upon us, giving 
us wisdom, and imparting strength to us. 

The friendship of Jesus was always sympa- 
thetic. Many persons, however, misunderstand 
the meaning of sympathy. They think of it 
as merely a weak pity, which sits down beside 
one who is suffering or in sorrow, and enters 
into the experience, without doing anything 
to lift him up or strengthen him. Such sym- 
pathy is really of very little value in the time 
of trouble. It may impart a consciousness of 
companionship which will somewhat relieve the 
sense of aloneness, but it makes the sufferer no 
braver or stronger. Indeed, it takes strength 
from him by aggravating his sense of distress. 

It was not thus, however, that the sympathy 
of Jesus was manifested. There was no real 
pain or sorrow in any one which did not touch 
his heart and stir his compassion. He bore 
the sicknesses of his friends, and carried their 
sorrows, entering with wonderful love into 
every human experience. But he did more 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 265 

than feel with those who were suffering, and 
weep beside them. His sympathy was always 
for their strengthening. He never encouraged 
exaggerated thoughts of pain or suffering — 
for in many minds there is a tendency to 
such feelings. He never gave countenance to 
morbidness, self-pity, or any kind of unwhole- 
someness in grief. He never spoke of sorrow 
or trouble in a despairing way. He sought 
to inculcate hope, and to make men braver 
and stronger. His ministry was always to- 
ward cheer and encouragement. He gave 
great eternal truths on which his friends might 
rest in their sorrow, and then bade them be of 
good cheer, assuring them that he had over- 
come the world. He gave them his peace and 
his joy ; not sinking down into the depths 
of sad helplessness with them, but rather lift- 
ing them up to sympathy with him in his 
victorious life. 

The wondrous hopefulness of Jesus pervades 
all his ministry on behalf of others. He was 
never discouraged. Every sorrow was to him 
a path to a deeper joy. Every battle was a 



266 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

way to the blessing of victoriousness. Every 
load under which men bent was a secret of 
new strength. In all loss gain was infolded. 
Jesus lived this life himself ; it was no mere 
theory which he taught to his followers, and 
had never tried or proved himself. He never 
asked his friends to accept any such untested 
theories. He lived all his own lessons. He 
was not a mere teacher ; he was a leader of 
men. Thus his strong friendship was full of 
magnificent inspiration. He called men to 
new things in life, and was ready to help them 
reach the highest possibilities in achievement 
and attainment. 

This friendship of Jesus is the inspiration 
which is lifting the world toward divine ideals. 
" I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw 
all men unto me," was the stupendous promise 
and prophecy of Jesus, as his eye fell on the 
shadow of the cross at his feet, and he thought 
of the fruits of his great sorrow and the in- 
fluence of his love. Every life that is strug- 
gling to reach the beauty and perfectness 
of God's thought for it is feeling the power 



JESUS AS A FRIEND. 267 

of this blessed friendship, and is being lifted 
up into the likeness of the Master. 

This friendship of Jesus waits as a mighty 
divine yearning at the door of every human 
heart. " Behold, I stand at the door, and 
knock," is its call. "If any man hear my 
voice, and open the door, I will come in to 
him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 
This blessed friendship waits before each life, 
waits to be accepted, waits to receive hospi- 
tality. Wherever it is received, it inspires in 
the heart a heavenly love which transforms 
the whole life. To be a friend of Christ is to 
be a child of God in the goodly fellowship of 
heaven. 



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